Thanksgiving is just wrapping up – last of the turkey made into . . . . . what the heck is that? Football games are over, and the shopping has begun in earnest. Although, with full disclosure, Her Ladyship has been shopping on line for months. She really has to allow time for her Asian suppliers to get everything here in time for Christmas. For many folks, though, the day after Thanksgiving is like a checkered flag in Daytona.
The Christmas season is underway. Some of our neighbors had a lit tree out front over the weekend. A boy scout delivered a wreath that I’d ordered. It’s sitting in the garage, because somehow, it’s just a wee bit early. No, we haven’t started decorating yet. We haven’t even started writing Christmas cards, giving thought to Christmas meals, or what configurations the family will be in. Typically, the Princess goes to visit friends for New Years, but this year, she’s going before Christmas so she can see the decorations in the DC. That throws our whole Christmas Order out the window. Although, as long as Herself has a day to make cookies, all is good.
It seems as though, from the moment that Home Depot starts putting out the artificial trees around Columbus Day, or the real ones are being cut and bound in New Brunswick, we begin the task of inventory. As I mentioned, Her Ladyship does most of her shopping on line, and so that she’s not caught up in any “supply chain” issues, she plans well ahead. Much of her gift collection – I call it that because it’s a teeny step or two beyond “Christmas shopping”, has arrived and is in place, hiding in every nook and cranny of the house. But what is overlooked so often in American households is a thorough review of the wrapping inventory.
We’ll be doing that this week some time. Pulling out the boxes of wrapping paper. Tossing some vintage bows that have seen better days. Every so often, an older gift box contains an historical receipt, for example from Filene’s. Most of you won’t remember Filene’s, or even the famous Filene’s Basement in Boston. Before Amazon, people would actually go into large department stores to do the bulk of their shopping, particularly at Christmas time. That was in the days when Black Friday was really a thing. Cyber Monday was a gleam and a dream for some marketing department. People made shopping trips on the day after Thanksgiving, because, well, nobody was working except the people in the stores. By way of background, I should tell you that Filene’s went the way of Jordan Marsh and other proud retailers of the last century. If I’m not mistaken, the two chains merged, in what became one of the greatest partnerships since Studebaker and Packard or Sears and Roebuck. . . . you won’t remember those either. They’re now part of Macy’s. But I digress.
In conducting a true inventory, it’s important to estimate exactly how much we’ll need. Those little felt gift bags into which we now put gift cards, are on “standby” in case we run short when Her Ladyship actually begins wrapping. Of course, that can’t happen until the tree is up, so you can see that the whole routine is a delicate, nuanced sequence not unlike dominoes.
When we were growing up, it was the tradition to save everything for the future. A piece of used wrapping paper, too small to use on anything but a jewelry box, would be saved anyway, going into the wrapping paper containers. If you don’t know what a wrapping container is, it’s about six feet long and eighteen inches wide, thus accommodating the rolls of paper. Bow boxes, on the other hand, are about two feet square. They contain all of the bows we’ve either torn off last year’s packages and deemed salvageable, or new bags of bows that we’ve purchased at some point – in all probability the day after Christmas last year. If you’re on the hunt for bows, the larger ones are the most prized, apparently, and therefore the most difficult to find. Some folks are a bit “vintage”, old-school, neo-Victorian. They like to buy rolls of ribbon and make their own bows. Now, there’s a lost art, like cigar-rolling. It indicates a compulsive need to hang on to traditions, combined with excess free time. Many won’t remember this either, but some stores would actually have professional package wrappers available right in the store. A luxury that Alexa on her best day can’t manage.
The wrapping paper will be assessed – I stand by and watch it unfold. It’s either been declared enough for this year, or some strategic restocking will be necessary, and I’ll have to brave the stores, and worse, exercise judgement on suitable paper patterns. (Side note – there will be heard, “I can’t believe you picked that out.” Repeatedly on my return.) In our house, we don’t actually count the rolls, because Her Ladyship can pretty much eyeball it. The bows are barely adequate. Two bags are acceptable but won’t draw excitement. My experience in the field of Christmas bows is that they are rarely the right color, size, etc. The rule seems to be that, no matter how many you have on hand, it will never be enough or what’s called for. Purchases will loom large in the coming weeks.
The other two items in stock are gift boxes and tags. For some reason, and I don’t know why, we save the empty sheets where tags used to be. Pages and pages, with maybe three or four usable tags. Why did we put those back in the storage boxes? Not to worry, because shipment after shipment of gift tags will be on the front doorstep as soon as they’re offloaded from a factory in a third world country. There are some return address labels too, which are necessary because we no longer affix our seals using wax. (I always rather liked that, when Cardinal Wolsey affixed his seal official documents. Bring back the wax and Great Seal, I say.) We don’t trust the postal service with our incredibly valuable Christmas cards. Putting those stickers on is an extra layer of security, like keeping your bank card’s PIN number written out and stored in a side compartment of your wallet.
For years, we were instructed to “save the boxes”, much as we stockpiled bows. We’d be careful not to tear the sides. In our household growing up, my mother had a special spot in the attic where the boxes were carefully sorted by size and condition. She didn’t like to venture into the attic, so it usually fell to us to do it. Even then, I was the organizer – my brother and sister were useless in this regard, so it was my responsibility to make sure everything was ship-shape, box-wise. When my parents sold the house and moved, we threw them all out, much to my mother’s anguish. In later years, Her Ladyship and I kept a goodly supply in the basement because we had no accessible attic here in the condo. I can tell you from experience that boxes in a musty basement don’t age particularly well. During a major clean-out a few years back, the entire collection went into the recycling bin, so now we buy them fresh and clean.
My brother took an interesting approach to wrapping Christmas presents. He favored a more casual, non-traditional look. Newspapers and brown paper bags often formed the skeleton of the wrapping. Embellishments included pine cones, dead leaves and branches, stray bits of bark, sprigs of holly clipped from nearby bushes, herbs well past their expiration date. There was virtually no sense of urgency about collecting and building an inventory. Most of his decorative accents were close at hand – in fact a bit like an episode of “Survivor”, where contestants might gift wrap presents for each other were they still stranded on the island.
So, while we wait for the inevitable – putting wreaths on the doors, dragging out the boxes of decorations, hauling the tree up from the basement, Her Ladyship enthroned at the dining room table which has become her temporary wrapping station, we at least can relax, secure in the knowledge that we have a detailed account of what’s needed for the presents. The gifts themselves are arriving daily. I know because Herself gives me regular alerts. “Two packages are being delivered today.” That means, I have to check the front porch, the back door, sometimes in front of the garage. I thank the delivery people for the whimsy and element of surprise they provide. The next stage, after securing the wrappings, is to “hide” the gifts. Most are in our bedroom closets, so we end up wearing the same things over and over until we actually have access to our clothes once again. In past years, we had large plastic storage containers into which we’d put the early arrivals. The bedroom took on a certain warehouse feel. Then we used the containers for other things, and never bothered to replace them, so everything is stuffed into any available space – the linen closet, the laundry area, bedroom closets, the Princess’s bedroom (or the Plant Room, for many of my frequent readers). Some are cleverly concealed in the Amazon boxes that we’ve kept, with the instruction, “That’s a really good box – save it.” I have, along with dozens of its close and distant relatives.
So, as you begin the inventory process, good luck. You may even come across the Christmas cards you bought a decade ago, put away carefully, and now they stand ready for service. Get your orders ready for three bags of bows, two or three packages of assorted boxes, and four dozen gift bags because, well, they’re so much easier. Yes, the checkered flag has been dropped. Let the holiday fun begin!!
I'm Thinking...No! 