To wrap or not to wrap? Why are Santa presents so fraught?

DOES the fat man wrap his presents for your kids? And how many does he give? How can something so simple become so fraught?

CHRISTMAS is just two sleeps away, and my social media feed is once again full of parents up at all hours of the night complaining about wrapping presents.

For years I thought they just had massive families and had bought presents for 30 cousins. But at some point over my parenting journey it finally clicked for me. These people weren’t wrapping presents for family members, they were helping Santa wrap his presents (if you get my drift).

Wrapping Santa presents? Santa doesn’t wrap presents. Does he? At our house his presents come unwrapped. Bare, if you would. In their natural state.

They are not covered in bows and paper and ribbons. There is none of that.

But to be clear, Santa doesn’t just randomly put stuff under our tree and cause a free-for-all on Christmas morning. Each child has a pillow case with their name lovingly embroidered on it. Santa leaves his presents, unwrapped, in these sacks/pillow cases. Then the other presents from myself and hubby are wrapped under the tree like all the other presents that we have bought for nieces, nephews and grandparents etc.

To me this makes perfect sense. Pillow case unwrapped presents = from Santa. Wrapped presents under the tree = from Mum and Dad. It’s pretty black and white. No room for confusion there.

Apparently I am in the minority though.

When I brought this up with friends I discovered that not only does Santa wrap in probably 80 per cent of houses (maybe more) but he even has his own wrapping paper in most of them.

What. The. Hell?

For starters that seems like an environmental nightmare. Are all the organic, hippie, environmental warrior ‘let’s save the world’ types happy to forgo all their beliefs and allow Santa to cut down an entire forest so that their kids’ presents are wrapped?

Even with our unwrapped stance we still manage to fill our entire recycling bin between the two kids’ presents and smaller ones for ourselves. How do people a) with more kids and, b) that wrap, manage garbage collection weeks over the festive period?

Secondly — who the hell has time for that?

But the fraught topic of Santa presents doesn’t end there. How do parents decide what’s from Santa and what’s from Mum and Dad? General rule for us (although it has been broken once or twice) is that anything that doesn’t fit in the pillow case is then from Mum and Dad. Therefore Mum and Dad get credit for the big presents.

I’m certain what Santa brings is discussed in school yards. Are kids clicking onto the fact Santa brings some kids a full size trampoline and other kids a board game?

It’s fascinating how such a long lived tradition has so many variations, not many rules and is incredibly contentious after all these years.

Wrapping, non-wrapping, big Santa presents or small Santa presents I just hope all the kids and their families celebrating this Christmas will wake up with smiles on their faces. Because, after all, it’s really not about what the gift is or how it’s wrapped but who is their to share the moment with you on Christmas morning.