art form we show our appreciation of by ripping it all to bits, whether it’s finely detailed origami or roughly Sellotaped crêpe paper. Given the mundane nature of the majority of gifts, present wrapping should give us a perfect opportunity to lend them a personal touch – but we’ve even started contracting out the wrapping because we’re lazy and we’re rubbish with Sellotape. ‘A lot of the skill of present wrapping is down to patience,’ says Julie Gubbay, who is great at wrapping presents and has her own business called That’s A Wrap. ‘People just give up after the third present, they get sick of it. But I was always good at it, because I really want them to look perfect. Pyramids and cylinder shapes are hard, though. One year I had to wrap up 200 toilet rolls. Don’t ask. It was a nightmare.’
Southsea, Christmas 1974
My dad was a very creative, inventive man who liked to make an effort with presents. The big present for my mum one particular year was a big wicker Ali Baba laundry basket. It was from John Lewis, it was bright orange and it was a Very Big Deal. The idea was to wrap it up like a giant cracker, so he got all of the children involved with Sellotape and scissors and bright green crêpe paper. We wrapped this basket up and placed this huge surprise next to the Christmas tree, although my mum obviously knew what it was all along.
On Christmas Day it became clear that there was no film in the camera. Normally we’d have loads of photos taken on Christmas Day, but we couldn’t buy film because the shops were shut, so my dad decided that we’d be very careful with all the wrapping paper, keep it all, and then recreate Christmas a few days later when he’d bought some film.
The Sunday after Christmas I remember coming home with my Brownie uniform on, and we all had to get changed into the clothes we were wearing on Christmas Day. We rewrapped the presents, including this laundry basket, and there’s a photo of us pulling this giant cracker and opening it. Then we recreated other key scenes from Christmas – and you can tell they’re recreated from the photos because we’re doing things you wouldn’t do on a normal Christmas Day, like me and my brother and sister pretending to admire the decorations. Looking back it was such an odd thing to do, but it was basically because my dad was so proud of the way we’d wrapped up the Ali Baba.
J. H.
For all the effort there has been to smash gender stereotypes, the typical haul of Christmas presents hasn’t changed much over the years: practical stuff for men, luxury stuff for women and a squeaky ball or a chewy stick for the pet.7 Each year brings a must-have children’s toy, from floppy Cabbage Patch dolls in 1983 to flippy Pogs in 1995 to eggy Hatchimals in 2016; many of those Christmas hits represent a kind of collective psychosis where we meekly cough up for them because we have neither the patience nor the imagination to think of anything better. The child who receives the coolest present may well end up provoking the ire of their siblings (e.g. space hopper stabbed with penknife), but sometimes those fashionable, much-hoped-for gifts simply don’t materialise. One year a friend of mine was convinced that his main present would be a Judge Dredd role-playing game, but it turned out to be some cork tiles, a disappointment so acute that he still feels the pain decades later. Most gifts deemed to be ‘wrong’ by kids are usually down to adults failing to second guess their offspring’s rapidly shifting whims, but for older recipients, ‘wrong’ gifts come in a much wider variety of sinister forms.
“And why the hell do you think that I need a stress ball?”
For starters, there’s talc. Let’s get talc out of the way immediately. Then there are ‘rude’ presents, like Quartz Love Eggs or Hematite Jiggle Balls, which have ended up under the tree but really shouldn’t have. (‘Don’t open that now. Helen, open it later. HELEN, DO NOT OPEN THAT.’) Present giving can be a high-stakes gamble; it’s not difficult to get someone something that they are guaranteed to ‘quite’ like (scented candles, socks, books), but a lot can go wrong in the pursuit of stunt gifts that have a 10 per cent chance of hitting the mark and a 90 per cent chance of provoking stern looks.
Merseyside, Christmas 1984
On Christmas Day, my dad’s brother, John, came around to give us our presents. John was a bit of a legend. He never usually bothered with Christmas, but this year he’d given the five of us a massive washing-machine-sized box, each. They were all wrapped up, sitting there in the living room. Being 11 years old I was really excited by this, but my mum and dad would have known that something was up, especially when John got his camera out to take photos. Anyway, I wrenched open the box and a live duck flew out. I crapped myself. There’s a picture of me somewhere leaping back with this duck approaching me. John had bought us five live ducks.
C. S.
An entire book could be written about men’s failed attempts to buy appropriate gifts, particularly for the people who, at least on paper, they’re supposed to be in love with. Receipts for lacy stuff from Intimissimi or Ann Summers must never, ever be mislaid, because they’re as integral a part of the gift as the goddamn lingerie. Ditto perfume: if the recipient hasn’t already expressed a preference, buying scent for them is exceedingly risky, like buying them a pair of shoes. Some men, however, make no effort to be romantic whatsoever.
Sheffield, Christmas 1992
I remember I was at university, and I went to visit my boyfriend in Sheffield just before Christmas. He said that he’d been thinking about what to get me, and he’d decided to get me a Ladyshave. And I thought, well, that’s awful – for all the obvious reasons – but I just laughed. I think I was waiting for a punchline, like ‘not really, I’ve got you a diamond.’
But on the day I left Sheffield to go back home for Christmas, we walked through the town centre and we stopped outside Argos. He asked me to wait there while he went in. So I stood there, thinking that it can’t be as bad as I think it’s going to be, he’ll salvage this somehow. But he came out with an Argos carrier bag, with a box inside, which did indeed contain a Ladyshave, and he gave it to me. I said thank you, turned and walked to the station, and I remember sitting there on the platform, thinking my god, my boyfriend’s got me a Ladyshave for Christmas. He even told me he was going to do it. And I didn’t stop him.
H. W.
Let’s also cast our mind back, briefly, to the second of Russell Belk’s aforementioned perfect gift characteristics: ‘The giver wishes solely to please the recipient’. As we know, people can sometimes give unto others gifts that they want themselves, an act that’s laughably transparent. The mother of a friend of mine is obsessed with owls. Her daughter doesn’t share her obsession, but one year her mother presented her with a huge gift-wrapped present, about three feet in height. It was a giant plastic owl.
Then there are the mysterious, last-minute presents with no obvious thought put into them, just objects, random objects, which can be bought, and occupy space, and can be wrapped up, so they’ll do. I don’t know, maybe a lampshade, or a box of plastic suction hooks, or a bag of pizza base mix, or a bottle of Vosene with a promotional comb Sellotaped to the side, or a Healthy Eating calendar with the price still stuck on, or an unusually shaped thing with no obvious function and no instruction manual to shed light on what it might be. This category of present can be borne out of desperation, or stinginess, or just a dislike of Christmas. But for some families, inexplicable bags of presents can start to become a tradition.
My mum grew up after the war, and she has that mentality of not spending money on things you don’t need. So on Christmas morning, we come down to the living room, and we say to the kids, ‘OK, Grandma’s presents are there in the corner, and we’re saving them until last.’ They’re always in a Lidl carrier bag, and they’re wrapped in whatever paper happens to be lying around, because she believes that Christmas wrapping paper is a waste of money. And the presents are legendary. She doesn’t ask us what we might like, she just gets whatever she wants. A key ring with a cat saying ‘Always Yours’ on it. A can of WD-40. Anchovy