A Wrap Song

[chomiji]

It's definitely That Time of Year, for better or worse:
 

At the first sign of Solstice, I assembled all my stuff:

12 bows like pompoms
11 rolls of foil
10 spools of ribbon
9 bows that pop up
8 rolls of Kraft
7 sheets of stickers
6 books of art wrap
5 Hannukah rolls!
4 spools of silk cord
3 rolls of scotch tape
2 art tissue packs
and some sharp scissors with the long blades!

I used to do a fair number of artsy-craftsy things: crewel embroidery, paper-cutting, batik, sewing (including things like dice bags and SCA costumes), making maps and drawings for the RPGs I ran. Over the years, with increasing family and job responsibilities and the advent of the Intarwebs, these have devolved into two hobbies: LJ icons (very recent) and gift wrapping.

There are lots of correct ways for others to wrap holiday gifts, but there is only one correct way for chomiji to wrap gifts:

1. Every gift in a given batch (such as "The Hanukkah presents for my sister's family that we gave out on Saturday night") must have a different wrapping paper. This is not as hard as it sounds because I have been doing it this way for decades, and saving ends of wrapping paper rolls for that long ... big gifts get wrapped from that year's new rolls, and little ones get decked out from tail-ends of previous years. However, it can be a problem at my sister-in-law's January blow-out (her husband, a minister, is too busy on Xmas day, so we celebrate with them later), which is often attended by 25 or more people, some of whom receive multiple presents.
2. All gifts given at a Hanukkah event must have wrappings in white/silver and blue, with accents of purple and gold. Other colors are permissable only in small amounts.
3. All gifts given at a Christmas even must have wrappings in red, green, and white/silver, with accents of gold (either metallic or flat). Other colors are permissable only in small amounts.
4. People who are receiving presents at such events but who are not followers of the religion involved will have their gifts wrapped in the appropriate colors but with a neutral design: snowflakes or other nature themes, stripes, dots, etc.
5. All gifts have some sort of ribbon or bow or tie on them, unless gift bags are used (see next).
6. Gift bags are used only in extremis, as in the case of a really oddly shaped gift or when time is seriously running out.
7. Gift tags are for utility purposes and are not part of the package decor. So they should be placed on the bottom of the package (or bag). They should be written neatly enough that the underage helpers who pull gifts from the massive group stack to deliver to the individual recipients (which is the custom on both sides of the family) have a snowball's chance in Hell of reading the names.
8. At gift-giving events, nice boxes, large pieces of relatively unbattered paper, fancy bows, and fabric/wired ribbon should be scrounged, except when the mom-in-law expresses interest in a piece of paper, in which case she gets first pick.

This is How It Is Done.

My family attempts to distract me from gift wrap displays during the holidays ... they seem to think I have an addiction problem. They're so silly ... .

Comments

[chomiji]

Well, I guess I could ask the Mr.'s brother to get me some Avatar on DVD for our late Xmas. I mostly ask them for music CDs and such anyway.

Well, that meta certainly helps ... do you know the circumstances of the publication that RFB was highlighting? Was it a one-off holiday special or something? Certainly it explains why we never see any of those hundreds of youkai do it - not even ones that might be considered high-powered, like Chin Yisou in the flashbacks of his encounter with Gonou.

[chomiji]

I've had enough people rec Avatar - my sister and her husband are watching it with their kids, for example - that it's probably worth doing site unseen.

Yeah, if I gave it any thought at all, I probably assumed that Banri or someone else in Banri's crew taught him how to do it - he wasn't old enough when Jien left, or soemthing, to have learned how. And that desperate look in his eyes when Banri first encounters him as a kid of 14 or so was compatible with that concept. But yeah, if he had been able to do that when he first encounters Sanzo, you could see him using the shakujo to try to disarm Sanzo.

(Somehow this has got me thinking again of Akira in SDK, who apparently has a scene in one of the volumes not yet translated into English in which everyone is telling their hard luck stories and he blandly tops them all with his tale of having grown up picking through the refuse of both homes and battlefields and being attacked by people and dogs ... the SDK guys are sort of anti-bishounen in that they're all gorgeous but almost all completely un-emo about the various horrible things that happened in their pasts.)