The Wrap Game

Let’s take a moment to think about how stupid wrapping paper is.

Why would anyone purchase high-quality decorative paper just for kids to shred? To briefly cover up the telltale Meh.com shipping label on the box, forestalling disappointment until the last moment?

A certain Meh staffer is considered a sub-standard gift-giver in his own family because he can’t get on board with this custom. He wraps presents, but refuses to buy paper for the purpose. He’s used newspaper, junk mail circulars, brown grocery bags, that perforated packing paper Amazon sometimes sends, and pictures torn from past years’ wall calendars. (These last are harder to fold, but make the best-looking salvaged wrapping paper.)

The very idea that people pay money for single-use wrapping paper is outrageous to him. What a waste! Especially in his case, as his habit is to hurriedly wrap gifts in the basement immediately before bringing them upstairs for presentation. In households where gifts sit prettily wrapped for admiration under a tree for days or weeks before they’re opened, he concedes it makes more sense. His presents are usually wrapped for about 90 seconds.

This Meh staffer’s indignation is probably akin to what settlers in the Idaho territory felt at the introduction of toilet tissue in America. “What!? Buy BRAND-NEW paper? For that? As if the good people at Sears & Roebuck haven’t sent us a marvelously thick volume of wipe-matter? As if there isn’t a bounteous supply of corn cobs? Why oughtn’t I just use a series of silk scarves, while I’m indulging my anus in ludicrous extravagance!?”

Unfortunately for our nameless staffer and you, social custom dictates we must wrap our gifts. But there’s nothing that says you can’t do it with bags.

Gift bags! They’re where it’s at. No guessing the size to cut, no unsightly tape wads securing your ineptly folded corners, no fretting over how to wrap oddly-shaped curios and plush stuffies. Just pop your present into an appropriately-sized sack, and you’re done.

With 50 of them in assorted sizes, it’ll be a long time before you’re scrounging through the recycling bin again for newspaper to wrap in. (For bonus mileage, try to grab back your bags for reuse after the gift recipients empty them.)

Perhaps most important, you can bask in your superiority over the suckers in your circle still buying new rolls of fancy printed gift wrap season after season! Point and laugh, if you feel so moved! What are they gonna do, end your friendship over it? Then your obligation to exchange gifts ends too. You win again!

But what to do with all these gift bags in that case? Hmm. Depends how low you’re running on corncobs, I guess.