WrappedFeeling constricted, or trapped, is a universal human experience, and every culture has symbols, or figures of speech, that allow it to express the condition. One of the most powerful metaphors for me is that of being swaddled or wrapped, like poor old Lazarus in his winding sheet when Jesus called him back to life, or Harry Houdini, wrapped with chains inside a sealed box, attempting to rise like a god from beneath the dirty waters of the Hudson River. Legend and myth are rife with evocative images of that kind, and for me there is something about the way we celebrate Christmas that inspires a similar meditation.
Like it or not, Christmas has become, more than anything else, a lavish festival of wrapping and unwrapping, and when we participate in the ritual I suspect we are all unconsciously acting out the central drama of the human condition. I know this will sound far-fetched to the symbolically challenged, but I think there’s something to it, and what intrigues me most is not our enthusiasm for exchanging gifts in an extravagant, sometimes impoverishing, potlatch of generousity, but the curious insistence that all the gifts be wrapped, so they can then all be unwrapped. I could be completely wrong about this, as I am about many things, but have concluded that the most important part of the ritual is that of unwrapping, and stripping away, as a necessary prelude to joy. It’s why it would be unthinkable for most of us to give a gift unwrapped, and why it’s not prayer that puts so many of us on our knees on the floor at two o’clock on Christmas morning. In wrapping we replicate our ego-confinement, and in unwrapping, our desired emancipation.
What put me on to this way of thinking was an exchange I had with a woman in a department store when I was in my early twenties. I don’t know her name (it probably one of those sweater-girl names from back then like Wilma, or Arlene, or maybe Sandra), but I do remember that she was attractive and flirtatious, and probably around thirty-five. She was wearing a shiny white blouse, unbuttoned to cleavage, ornamented by a Christmas corsage big enough to serve as a table centrepiece. Her friendly smile was framed by lots and lots of holly-berry lipstick, and her straw-blonde hair teased up into some kind of indestructible hairdo. All of that doesn’t sound so great to me now, but at the time I thought she was quite something.
She worked in the department store every Christmas wrapping presents for busy shoppers, and on the wall above her table was a sign that declared, IT’S NOT A GIFT UNTIL IT”S WRAPPED. And that’s just the spirit she brought to her work. Wrapping for her was a passion, and the way she shook loose the ribbon, spread the paper, and then picked ever so carefully the final sprigs of green or silver, reminded me of how a great chef might garnish a meal, or a famous artist finish off a canvas.
On the day of my recollection she was wrapping a gift I had bought for my girlfriend, and to pass the time I asked her what was the biggest wrapping challenge she ever faced. She said it was a toboggan. “I don’t do those anymore,” she added with a smile. I also asked her if it bothered her that within a few days all her work would be torn to shreds. “Oh no dear,” she replied as she folded under the edge of the paper, “that’s the whole point isn’t it -- to get to the gift.” I liked her reply, and the confidential way she phrased it, but it made me wonder why, if the whole point is to get to the gift, we expend so much time and effort concealing it in a box beneath layers of tissue and seasonal paper, and then wrapping string and ribbon around the whole business.
We both were enjoying the banter so, when she was almost finished, I informed her teasingly that if she did much more to beautify my package my girlfriend might not want to unwrap it. Without missing a beat she smiled provocatively and responded, “Well then, I guess she’ll just have to unwrap you,” which made me blush a little because I realized she was probably reflecting back what I had been thinking about her.
Arlene, or Wilma, or whoever she was, was wiser than she knew on that Christmas Eve Day afternoon, for I have discovered over the years that getting unwrapped is exactly what I want for Christmas, and what I wish for all my friends. In fact, it’s pretty much the only thing I want. If I can also get disrobed that is a bonus, and another powerful metaphor, but it’s my eyes I want unwrapped, and my heart, so I can once again glimpse the infinite in every brown nut and piece of hard candy, and feel the presence of the sweet eternal vibrating in everyone I meet, and in myself.
Unwrapping presents doesn’t do that for me anymore, but in the removing of layers of concealment, and the cutting of strings, I am at least reminded of what I really desire, and that I already have it.
And by the way, if I was making the sign it would read, IT’S NOT A GIFT UNTIL IT’S UNWRAPPED.
David Weale
David Weale's children's story The True Meaning of Crumbfest is available in an unabridged audio edition from Rattling Books. Narrated by a five year old Antonia Francis it recently garnered an Earphones Award from AudioFile. Several of David's books are available from Acorn Press in Prince Edward Island where David makes his home.
