To think not wrapping Christmas presents is thoroughly bizarre

[Bearbehind]

I’ve literally never heard of this before being on MN.

I genuinely don’t understand the concept of giving a gift and it not being in some sort of wrapping.

It seems so clinical not to do so

Another one here where the children's Santa presents aren't wrapped. Weren't for me and my DB so that's my normal. Wrapping them all is just pointlessly time consuming and wasteful, so we don't.

Also, as Pixie2015 said, our kids have always liked the wow factor of being able to see them all set out on Christmas morning, as did my DB and I.

All other presents are wrapped though.

Santa never wrapped my presents as a kid and he doesn’t for my kids either...laid out on the sofa like others have said. I love it that way!

Wrapping is fun and puts me in the Christmas spirit. I will acknowledge that if I had to wrap a mountain of gifts, it might lose its appeal, but I'd still do it. A wrapped gift is more fun than unwrapped, no matter the age of the recipient.

(Giftbags, brown paper, newsprint, etc. all count as "wrapped", though. As long as you can't see what it is right away, that's the point, imo.)

Santa never wrapped my presents as a kid and he doesn’t for my kids either...laid out on the sofa like others have said. I love it that way!

I guess it would be odd if we were all the same but I honestly can’t get my head round this! 😆

I don't see how unwrapped gifts have any "wow factor"!

Wrapped gifts do.

The wow factor is from seeing everything in one go, rather than having to plough through piles of wrapping paper. That's a bit bland. In my opinion. Obviously this is one of those marmite topics.

Santa does wrap presents. However he uses his own pattern of wrapping paper.

Isn't the 'wow' because it's something you want, not because it looks pretty wrapped up?

You never see Christmas films where the gifts are all on display rather than wrapped. 😆

I'd prefer to receive unwrapped presents than have more wrapping paper going in the bin.
Santa didn't wrap our presents.

The wow factor is getting a gift you like, the wrapping is incidental.

I didnt one year when I had just about scraped the cash together for the few presents I got, nothing left over for wrapping paper.

My mum said Santa presents were never wrapped for her and her siblings so she carried that on. When I was a child it was absolutely magical walking into a dimly lit living room and just being able to make out all your presents in a pile. It was exciting going through them all; they didn’t need to be wrapped.

I do the same for my children. Small presents (unwrapped) in a stocking and anything a bit bigger piled around it. Presents that come from relatives are all wrapped and the children know it is the relatives who got them those things, rather than Santa.

I can’t see that wrapping things would make the experience particularly more exciting and it is much less faff, and less waste, to not wrap them.

If Amazon don't gift wrap it, it ain't going to get wrapped

FC wraps them in a stocking.
The rest of us use gift bags so we can reuse them.

@Bearbehind You never see Christmas films where the gifts are all on display rather than wrapped.
Ah, but have you noticed the way they sometimes cheat in the theatre? (I saw this in the ballet the Nutcracker.) Wrapped presents are handed out, complete with ribbons tied round them. But when they open them, they simply take the lids off the boxes, revealing that the paper is carefully wrapped around the boxes and the lids separately, so no wrapping paper is spilled!

My parents didn't use wrapping paper for big presents; they saw it as an extravagance. They used newspaper sometimes. And I sometimes wonder: what's the protocol with gifts which are too big to wrap, such as bikes, climbing frames, playhouses?

The picture here is Wikihow's answer to saving wrapping paper: gift-wrap the recipient, instead of the presents!

I quite enjoy wrapping presents, sometimes just doing them in brown paper and string but decorating the paper with holly or ivy from the garden. I also look for plain (recycled) gift bags in charity shops then decorate them with little pictures or plaques, also from charity shops.

Unwrapping presents is half the fun at Christmas or birthdays in my opinion.

www.wikihow.com/Save-Gift-Wrapping-Paper

Unwrapped presents on Christmas morning sounds so boring. Ditto piles. The fun is digging under the tree and finding a wrapped present with your name on!

Is it an Irish thing?

It's definitely not an Irish thing. My presents from Santa (Santy) were always wrapped, as were my husband's, and my kids presents are wrapped now.

Santa has his own special paper and tags, and an old old elf writes the tags (that's why the writing's so shaky)....

Is anyone else starting to think that there might be more than one Father Christmas?

My MIL didn’t bother to wrap PFB’s 1st birthday present. Fine if she was giving it in a gift bag or even if just handing it over, but no, despite working in a large supermarket, she thought wrapping sellotape around a carrier bag would do it.

I don’t get it, wrap it or don’t wrap it but surely you try not to make it look shit

Stocking presents are wrapped in tissue paper - no sellotape just folded over and stuffed in stocking. Paper is the kept for the next year. Some of those tissue paper sheets are like old friends

Father Christmas uses red paper for stocking presents. I use brown paper and string because "...these are a few of my favourite things". Sensory issues etc aside, unwrapping 5 things is, to my mind, much more special than tipping out 10 unwrapped things. Part of the fun of everything is the unwrapping - if I saw a naked bloke in the street, I would probably be quite repelled, but when clothed, you can imagine all sorts!!

My MIL gives unwrapped presents. She'll suddenly hand you a book or something. I don't mind personally but I like a surprise for the kids.

In the 70s, my Mum and Dad always went out on Christmas Eve to the pub. Then they'd come home merry and try to wrap our gifts!

More than once I came down to presents that just had paper balanced on top of them! 😂