People who don’t wrap Christmas gifts. Reveal yourselves!

[RollyPollyBatFace]

I was chatting to someone at work and she casually revealed that she never wraps any Christmas presents for her kids. Or in fact, anyone.

just pops everything under the tree or in a pile and that’s it. Jobs a good un.

She couldn’t explain why really - just said she’d always done it that way so I’m turning to MN to ask … do you do this? And if so, why?

I take a leaf out of my mum's book and reuse wrapping paper. My kids are all older now so there's no frenzied tearing off of paper and I collect it up, fold it neatly and then store it away under something heavy which serves to press a lot of the creases out. I then reuse it.

Never had wrapped Santa presents as a child. Neither did any of my friends. There was 6 of us kids though. Dh always had his wrapped and we did no wrapping for a few years then dc happened to say she’d prefer them wrapped so we have ever since. Dh does it all though as I had wrapping.

Same here.

I don’t have unwrapped presents under the tree though, as stated in OP.

aame as @Fupoffyagrassholethe Santa presents only appear during Christmas Eve night, but there are there, on display, ready to be played with in the morning.

Me, I'm too lazy for that and it feels wasteful. The nice bag is way more practical and looks just as good.

My friend has always cited the environment on this— I watch the environmental impact of things where I can but I don’t know out of all the environmental atrocities this warrants that much attention as opposed to the plastic encasing toys, things like balloons etc I think the unwrapping is part of the everything and couldn’t stop this!!

Wrapped presents are so nice. I get the gift bag plan but I don't like it if loads of unwrapped things are in the bag. I really don't understand the just put them naked under the tree people. How do people even know which gifts are for them or are tags put straight on the item?

Wrap gifts for others but DH and I have big Christmas sacks and we just pop the gifts for each other as they arrive into the sack in their boxes still - last year I was most bemused when I opened a package containing a load of frost covering for the allotment though 🤣

Really like the idea of fabric bags but am an extremely novice seamstress - anyone got any good instructional videos?! Too late for this year but if I start in January I might have enough by next Christmas 😁

You really don’t need a video.

1. cut two rectangles of fabric and lay pattern side facing.
2. sew up 3 sides
3. double fold over the open side to make a large hem
4. start at one side hem and sew nearly all the way around leaving the side seam open
5. thread through ribbon or cord into the hem pocket to use as the draw string.

When you gain experience you can add a button hole to the front, or use grommets, and thread the cord/ ribbon though or look at other ways to finish but they aren’t necessary.

I get Christmas fabric here, so it is inexpensive and if I mess up it doesn’t matter. https://poundfabrics.co.uk/collections/christmas-fabrics In fact playing around with making these bags, adding button holes, flaps, zips, would be a great way to up skill on something that isn’t expensive or you have spend a long time on.

Not to mention just plain CBA.

if it’s dull and boring without the wrapping then I would guess it’s just dull and boring full stop

I get presents I love - disguised/ hidden in a bag or a box rather than wastefully wrapped showing that the giver cares/ has similar moral values to me

I won’t waste my time or money on something that harms the planet for no reason other than you think it looks nice and should be done that way.

Wrapped presents always under the tree. The stockings go on door handles on Xmas eve after they fall asleep and gifts inside are unwrapped but only have about 5 items in each like a chocolate Santa or toothbrush. The wrapped gifts under the tree are surprises and I want my kids to see them all under the tree excited by all the colours of the wrapping when they come in on Xmas morning. I’ve built DD’s little dollhouse already and I’ll wrap it a little so she can’t see what it is when she comes in.

Stocking presents are never wrapped. I used to wrap everything else with newspaper, string and sprigs of greenery. However over the years I have made a collection of gift bags and stockings that can hang on the tree from recycled fabrics which I've embellished. Jeans legs make very good bottle bags and stained/ripped school dresses can be cut up to make festive gingham bags. I have appliqued stags heads onto the bottle bags and hearts on the gingham ones. Stockings are usually embellished with ribbons off crackers etc. My theme is all blue so everything looks cohesive together under the tree and it is much quicker to do.

My parents never wrapped the gifts from Santa and neither do we! Everything else is wrapped.

Never known anyone not wrap Christmas gifts and I think it's really odd to not wrap them!

Not odd. Just different to what you do.

I find stockings full of tat/boring stuff weird. Just gimme the good present!

How experienced are you at spending Xmas seeing other peoples children receive their Santa gifts?

Because lets be honest most peoples 'experience' of Christmas is at best limited to their near family or maybe their partners family at best, with their own family tending to all share the same family traditions.

Very few people have wide and varied experience of spending Christmas morning witnessing a selection of peoples traditions from different families, areas, classes or cultures.

Lots of people throw blanket terms on the mumsnet Christmas forum of 'Nobody I know does...' but the truth is non of us actually have any idea what most people are doing. For all these people know Sandra from works mam might have been catalan and so shes going home to feed her Poo Log and its just never come up at work. We only know right now that anyone does any of this stuff different because we are on a very specific forum specifically to ask this question that no one talks about in day to day life.

Well even if we don't see inside other people's houses as you say, we do know that there are thousands of rolls of wrapping paper in the shops, that every Christmas film features "wrapped" presents, that every public Christmas tree has fake "wrapped" presents under it, so presumably a considerable number of people are wrapping their presents.

Not to say it's wrong not to but presumably a common custom.

I dont anymore, I've a 15 year old and 2 adults so they have a fair idea what they're getting. I do wrap for my 2 year old grand daughter, I love seeing her rip it open.

People tend to wrap personal presents from and to each other that are handed out in advance that will be sat around under trees etc... most books and films show Santa NOT wrapping presents though.

Apparently the 'wrap everything' lot just completely overlook this somehow and claim it doesn't happen but if you look back through most pop culture especially older examples you will see they don't tend to have wrapped presents from Santa only from person to person.

Its fine if you want to wrap everything, its fine to wrap just somethings, its fine not to wrap anything at all its fine to use sacks/stockings/bags in place of wrapping but the assertion that everyone wraps with paper and its just a few odd weirdos that do not to is just purely wrong.

As is the assumption that 'everyone' you know must be the same as you in their private life and traditions. In real life I have NEVER once had a conversation with someone outside of my household about how we do and don't wrap presents, people that know me literally do not know because its not a normal chat to come up.

These are some traditional Christmas photo of Santa delivering gifts. Certainly not new or 'odd' to have them unwrapped.

Of course you wrap or bag up gifts for Christmas. You wouldn’t give a Birthday gift 🎁 unwrapped would you ?

Yup! My kids gifts are on display when they come downstairs under a big banner which says happy birthday. Any which come from outside the home are there too in their wrapping, plus all the cards etc. Looks really jolly. DH and I give each other experiences so no wrapping involved.

I think cba is a bit harsh. People's lives are stressful enough without having to wrap big presents like bikes , toy kitchens, go karts etc

I’d agree with really big presents, but I didn’t mean those.

I used to love wrapping - now I despise it with a passion and every year I say "Next year it's gift bags" - but it never is, I still wrap everything.

I've got a Border Collie rescue who is extremely reactive to certain things and sellotape seems to be one of them - as soon as the little horrorbag sees the sellotape, he barks non-stop and whirls around until the sellotape is put away.
Tried locking him out of the room, but he barks and howls as though it's the end of the world - tried those sonar bark machines - he ignores them because he's over 10 years old and apparently older dogs can't hear the frequency.

To make things worse, as my little mate is barking and whirling with a look of utter joy on his daft but beautiful face, he has a tendency to fart - frequently - during the entire process - I bloody HATE wrapping!!

I even bought gift bags this year - but it feels wrong not to wrap the presents so I shall put up with my farting, whirling, loveable menace and wrap the presents and THEN put them in the gift bags - God knows why I put myself through it.