Gift wrap please!

This is the third installment of my favorite Christmas memories.  You can read my first two here and here. 

I have always enjoyed wrapping gifts.  As a kid I enjoyed picking the perfect paper and ribbon, tying bows and placing the tag in the perfect place.  I loved a challenge...how DO you wrap a basketball so it doesn't look like a basketball?  And, I was queen of wrapping little things in big boxes to confuse and excite the receiver.  Not to mention, a tree just looks too bare without gifts underneath.  There is nothing short of pure joy then when you put freshly wrapped gifts under a twinkling tree. 

I am sure my mother loved my gift wrapping excitement.  There were even years when I wrapped my own gifts, under the ruse that they were for a cousin or a friend's little girl.  I was none-the-wiser, as long as I got to put a pretty bow on it, I didn't care who it was for!  I remember years when mom and I would set up a wrapping station in the guest bedroom.  I am sure I bugged her to death, wanting to wrap things that were not ready to be wrapped and searching for new things that needed festive wrapping paper.  

I remember one year when I was probably 8 or 9, during a wrapping session, I wrapped a clock radio for my Grandpa.  We had put batteries in the radio so it would be all ready to go when he opened it on Christmas Day.  As soon as I put the last piece of tape on the radio, and flipped the box over, we heard music coming from inside.  I must have hit the button when I was putting it back in the box and now we had a singing Christmas gift.  Well, instead of carefully opening the package, I frantically ripped off the paper as if I was opening my own gift from Santa.  Mom looked on in shock and then explained that we could have just opened one end carefully, but now we will have to re-wrap the entire thing!  Imagine my disappointment...muwahahahaha...wrap it again?  Oh what a shame.  So I proceeded to wrap the gift again, secretly wishing I could wrap presents forever!  

Nowadays, I still look forward to wrapping gifts.  I try to find interesting ways to wrap gifts for other occasions, but Christmas gifts are in a category of their own.  I still like to get the festive holiday paper and bows, wrapping each gift slowly, savoring the perfection of a neatly wrapped box.  Now, I am sure you are all clambering to call me over to your abode to wrap your mountain of Christmas gifts...but I would never want to rob you of the joy...I mean it is Christmastime after all :-)