I suck at gift wrapping. I really do. When I’m done with a gift, it looks like the cat did most of the work, even without the strands of fur stuck to the edges of the scotch tape. I remember as a child, watching my mother wrap gifts in a way that strategically used the least amount of wrapping paper, AND sometimes made a very cool folding design on a corner. Is it origami? Is it a gift? Who knows, but it has great clean lines and no creases that give away multiple attempts to center the gift on the paper, which is something that my wrapped gifts inevitably go through. It’s so humbling to spend so much time and engineering on covering a gift with formerly pretty paper, only to have it be all puffy and asymmetrical despite starting out as a perfect rectangle. Yeah, we’re not even talking about wrapping balls or stuffed animals or anything weird like that. Clearly the gift of wrapping (har) is not hereditary.

So instead of being a “traditional” couple in which the woman does all the decorative grunt work, in this marriage Mr. W is the aesthetics go-to person. When he wraps a gift, it looks like something done by a professional designer to showcase in a Macy’s holiday window display in New York, all centered artwork, tight lines, hidden tape, color-coordinated ribbons hanging in perfect curlicues, matching dramatic gift tag peeking out from a bow or floral accent. Sometimes shiny glittery foil stuff hangs from the gift, too. Clearly, it’s a lot of work, so if a gift has to be wrapped, I stall and mope and whine and hint until magically, with no effort from me, it turns into something worthy of being a centerpiece. The Christmas tree, by the way, is all him. Sure his projects usually involve some amount of cussing, but that’s why art is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, right? As long as I’m not the one perspiring.

This year, Mr. W is probably tired from all the baby care and the tree, because we’ve already exchanged presents. We ordered our stuff online (cuz having a baby is not conducive to going to the mall to get, well, mauled), and when they arrived, we just handed each other the shipping boxes as they came in. It’s very romantic, and perfect for two exhausted parents whose baby is too young (likely for the last time) to care and whose older (step)kidlets are too old to care and likely won’t be around, anyway. The stepdaughter definitely won’t be around; she’s spending this year’s holidays in Germany, and she spent last year’s in Haiti, so there’s our excuses to be lazy.

I’m SO lazy, in fact, that I lugged my judge’s Christmas gift in to work in the original delivery box with plans to go out at lunch to buy wrapping paper and wrap it, but he happened upon the box before lunchtime, asked about it, I confessed my lunch plans, did my whining hinting routine, and it worked on HIM, too. He gave me “special dispensation” to not wrap the gift, despite the fact that I know he and his family do a whole opening-the-gifts-together-under-the-xmas-tree-on-xmas-morning tradition. But shamelessly, I simply resealed the shipping box with small pieces of scotch tape over the packing tape, then stuck a small gift sticker directly on the cardboard box and wrote his name by the “to” prompt and my name by the “from” prompt. He’d half-joked that he’s fine with me just slapping a bow on it and leaving it unwrapped, and I didn’t even do THAT. Hey, at least I didn’t just write the “to” and “from” directly on the cardboard box with a permanent marker. =P

All that being said, I am grateful to the inventor of the gift bag concept, and grateful to society for making it not only acceptable, but common and trendy. I’m also grateful for being Chinese, cuz my gift to my grandma is an unwrapped Allie calendar and a red envelope stuffed with lots of cash. I guess by American standards, a gift of cash is “tacky,” but I still think it’s the best gift card. It doesn’t expire (although it does lose value over time), and every merchant will take it. Best of all, no wrapping required.