Coming Unwrapped

There are many aspects to Christmas in films and adverts which annoy me. It's always snowing; everyone can sing carols perfectly; nobody wears the stupefied, semi-drunk expression so characteristic of Christmas Day; there's never a vegetarian alternative to a roasted turkey with stuffing up its arse. But one image in particular has an insurmountable gap from reality. The wrapping of the presents.

Picture the scene. There's generally a Caucasian mother and her two Caucasian children. Everyone is smiling. Oftentimes, everyone is laughing. They wrap their presents perfectly and with little effort. The paper is shiny. The bows are immaculate. It looks like fun.

Here's what is always missing from the scene:

a) the initial seventeen hour search for the end of the sellotape

b) the five hour searches for the new end of the sellotape after each strip is cut off

c) the moment when you fail to get the sellotape exactly parallel with the end of the paper, meaning half of it is wasted

d) the realisation that the section of paper you've cut off is just too small to cut the present properly

e) the times when the sellotape takes on a life of its own, whizzes through the air and sticks to your coffee table

f) the Dilemma of the Ends: do you stick them up as well (meaning the present is impossible to unwrap) or leave them flapping loose (meaning the present looks crap)

g) the cussing

Wrapping presents is never fun. Wrapping presents is grim work. It involves a medium designed to be written on and nothing else; and another which most of us have otherwise abandoned, for good reason, once we stopped trying to build Blue Peter models. It also requires the human race to evolve about five more hands apiece. I don't know who first devised this grisly concept. But I suspect it was somebody with the secret agenda of making us hate Christmas. (See also: late night shopping; jokes in crackers; Cliff Richard). In fact, I bet all Bah Humbugs, from Scrooge to the Grinch, were committed Yuletide-philes until they started to wrap their presents. I will develop this theory further in an essay entitled 'Twas The Night Before Christmas And All Through The House Not A Sound Could Be Heard Except The Tearing Of Paper And A Loud Swearword.'