Invicta Vlogs
It’s Christmas!
In the words of Andy Williams, ‘it’s the most wonderful time of the year!’
I love Christmas! Every year I get hugely excited as we build up to the big day at home and not just because there is a forthcoming school holiday on the horizon! I love putting up the decorations, planning the food and drink, spending time with friends and family and even shopping for gifts. I have nearly made all the purchases and this weekend decided to start the gift wrapping. I always do this with such good intentions wanting to make each gift look fancy and professionally wrapped like they do in the magazines. I buy ribbon, lovely wrapping paper and even some tissue paper with extra stylish embellishments (think holly, candy canes and cinnamon sticks!) in my attempts to be artistic. I put on the first mulled wine to warm, get some snacks prepared, put on a Christmas film and sit down in the lounge surrounded by gifts and wrapping delights ready to impress all with my creative skills. Then I get started and realise there is one thing I am lacking……patience! The first gift takes an age and even then it looks like a screwed up bit of wrapping paper with a ribbon haphazardly attached. How do people do this, I wonder. The second gift just about makes it through another attempt to perfect this wrapping malarky but resembles something that my cat has attacked and walked away from! At this point the Christmas film has finished, my mulled wine has gone cold, the snacks have been eaten and I am losing the will to live surrounded by annoying holly leaves, candy canes and cinnamon sticks! Who invented this present wrapping idea anyway I wonder and decide to look it up so I know who to blame and to enjoy a little gift wrapping avoidance of course!
I find that the tradition of wrapping presents to create the secrecy of the gift inside started a very long time ago. Historians believe wrapping gifts started not long after paper was invented thousands of years ago even though the wrapping paper we know of today is a more recent invention. Before then, gifts were wrapped in simple tissue paper or brown paper and before that in cloth going right back to the Tokugawa period in the 1600s when the Japanese style of furoshiki developed. Wrapping paper wasn’t introduced until the early 1900s with the first American gift wrap company founded by Eli Hyman and Morris Silverman in 1903. I then find that wrapping presents back then was even harder than today due to the fact that adhesive tape wasn’t invented until 1930! Prior to this sealing wax and string were used to secure the wrapped presents – what would my wrapped gifts look like I ponder!
As my gift wrapping avoidance, I mean research, continued this weekend I stumbled across interesting articles about going back to the old ways and more environmentally friendly approach of wrapping gifts in reusable cloth. In America alone, 4 million pounds of paper gift wrap is thrown away each year and, of course, the majority of paper used cannot be recycled. Clearly my mother was ahead of her time when she made us save wrapping paper to use again all those years ago! It is a valid point to consider though as I look at all the paraphernalia I am surrounded by in my lounge and as we continue to consider how we can help protect the environment for the future. Recyclable gift bags and reusable cloth will be the way I go next year and maybe my gifts might look more stylishly wrapped than they ever have before.
Happy Christmas one and all!
Of course, at this time of year, it is important we consider those who perhaps will not experience Christmas in the way we will and think about ways we can support charities to make a difference. The Salvation Army run an annual Christmas Present Appeal collecting donated presents for children who might not otherwise receive a Christmas gift. To find out more you can visit www.salvationarmy.org.uk/christmas-present-appeal and not only will you be doing something lovely for charity this Christmas, you don’t even have to wrap the donated gifts!
