There are people who can wrap a present beautifully.
The corners are sharp. The paper lies flat. The joins somehow meet exactly where they're supposed to. Add a piece of ribbon and the whole thing looks as though it has just left the gift-wrapping counter at some very expensive shop.
We are not those people.
My family is notoriously bad at wrapping presents.
It's become something of a standing joke. Put a pile of beautifully wrapped presents under the tree and add one slightly wonky parcel with a suspicious amount of Sellotape, and chances are one of us is responsible.
We can't cut paper straight.
We apparently don't understand corners.
We either cut enough paper to wrap a small refrigerator or discover, halfway through, that we're about four centimetres short.
There is folding. Unfolding. Refolding.
There may be language unbecoming of the festive season.
Eventually somebody says "Oh, for heaven's sake" and goes looking for a gift bag.
Which raises a rather good question.
Why are we wrapping the thing in the first place?
We've been hiding presents for a very long time
Wrapping gifts isn't a modern invention.
Different cultures have been enclosing and decorating gifts for centuries, although paper wasn't always involved.
In ancient China, where paper itself was invented, monetary gifts were enclosed in paper as far back as the Southern Song dynasty. The Japanese tradition of furoshiki used beautifully folded cloth to carry and present goods and gifts.
In Korea, bojagi — wrapping cloths that could be practical, decorative and sometimes highly elaborate — served a similar purpose.
Elsewhere, gifts have been presented in fabric, baskets, boxes and other containers depending on what was available and what the occasion demanded.
The mass-produced decorative wrapping paper we recognise today is much newer.
One often-told part of the story comes from the Hall brothers — the founders of Hallmark — in Kansas City in 1917. Their store ran out of the plain tissue traditionally used for wrapping gifts during the Christmas rush. They put decorative French envelope-lining paper on sale instead.
Customers loved it.
The following year they tried it again.
Eventually decorative wrapping paper became a product in its own right.
And generations of my family have been fighting with it ever since.
But why cover up a perfectly good present?
There is something rather peculiar about wrapping when you think about it.
We've spent time choosing something somebody will hopefully love.
Then we hide it.
And that's precisely part of the appeal.
Wrapping creates anticipation.
For a few moments, the present could be anything.
You pick it up. Perhaps shake it, despite being told not to. Judge its weight. Feel the shape through the paper. Read the little tag. Wonder.
Then comes the reveal.
Researchers have even studied this. Gift wrapping can influence the recipient's expectations and experience of the gift. Presentation creates another little stage between receiving something and discovering what it actually is.
So wrapping isn't merely decoration.
It's part of the theatre of giving.
It also says: this isn't an ordinary thing
A book sitting on a table is a book.
Wrap that same book, put someone's name on it and hand it to them, and suddenly something has changed.
This one is for you.
Wrapping separates a gift from an everyday purchase.
It signals that there is an occasion attached to it — a birthday, Christmas, a thank you, a new baby, an anniversary or absolutely no reason whatsoever.
The paper lasts perhaps thirty seconds.
The message arrives before it's torn off.
Unless, of course, you can't wrap to save your life
Which brings us back to my family.
I own a gift store.
You might reasonably assume that this means I possess some sort of innate gift-wrapping ability.
I do not.
It's actually something of an occupational handicap.
And it's not for lack of trying.
I have watched people effortlessly create beautiful hampers wrapped in cellophane. So naturally, I've attempted it myself.
In my head: beautifully gathered cellophane, gorgeous bow, expensive-looking gift basket.
In reality: considerably more cellophane than seemed physically possible, strange bulges, something leaning to one side and me wondering why everybody on YouTube made it look so easy.
Alas, it nearly always misses the mark.
Which is why whoever invented the gift bag deserves considerably more recognition than they receive.
The gift bag: refuge of the wrapping impaired
Put present in bag.
Add tissue paper.
Done.
No measuring. No attempting to find the elusive straight edge of a roll of paper. No parcel that looks beautiful from the top but has an unexplained geological formation underneath.
And importantly, the present is still hidden.
There is still anticipation.
There is still that moment of reaching inside and discovering what's there.
The bag does exactly what wrapping paper was supposed to do.
It just doesn't test the strength of family relationships beforehand.
Boxes work too. So does a basket. Tissue paper can hide a multitude of sins. A beautiful tea towel or piece of fabric can become part of the gift itself.
And sometimes the slightly wonky parcel is perfectly fine.
Perhaps perfect wrapping was never the point
There are astonishingly beautiful ways to wrap presents.
People create pleats and fans and immaculate corners. They use handmade papers, ribbons, dried flowers and elaborate bows. Some parcels genuinely are works of art.
I admire them enormously.
From a safe distance.
Because the reason we started wrapping gifts wasn't so that everyone could demonstrate mastery of scissors and Sellotape.
We wrap because opening is part of receiving.
It creates curiosity.
It turns an object into a present.
It gives us that lovely few seconds of not knowing what's inside.
And perhaps a badly wrapped present does something else as well.
When one of those wonky parcels appears in my family, everybody already knows.
Someone has wrestled with the paper.
Someone has cut it wrong.
Someone has discovered the shortage and patched the bottom.
Someone has probably sworn at it.
And underneath all that questionable workmanship is something they chose especially for you.
Which makes the wrapping rather good after all.
Although at SISU, we'll probably still put it in a gift bag.