(no subject)

[freyakitten]

It hit me, last night, as I was buying wrapping paper and cards (how hard is it to find Christmas cards and wrapping paper that don't feature snow, or fir trees, or big fat men that look vaguely like my dad, or stylised gift-wrapped boxes, or other religious icons?), the traditions of Christmas wrapping paper. My family traditionally doesn't buy wrapping paper. It gets reused year after year, and only gets thrown out when it's too small to wrap something in, torn to shreds, or taped so securely that it's impossible to undo and fold flat. No-one can ever find sticky tape because Dad has hidden it so that he can find it when he needs it - and then forgotten where he put it. I tended to use electrical tape of various colours, or slivers of duct tape to secure my wrapping paper, because I could always find those in the first-aid kit.

Some wrapping paper that still gets used, I remember from primary school - it's like an old friend that comes out at Christmas. It's always fun seeing who used what to wrap which present, and who actually bought new wrapping paper (usually my sister and me, especially now that neither of us lives with my parents and has access to their stash).

For non-family, I'll usually use new paper because I know some people get offended at the very idea of recycling paper instead of buying new every time. Those people I know are OK with it get recycled paper, but the default outside the family is new paper.

My question is, how do you feel about receiving things that have been wrapped in recycled wrapping paper? Does this opinion change if you recognise the paper from giving it to them the previous year?

Comments

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

I've been recycling paper for years - I think there's nothing worse that the bags and bags of paper waste that accumulate in front of the tree on Christmas morning, and I've never yet seen a wrapping paper that claimed to be recycled. I like the foil ones best - they hold up best to repeated sticky-taping.

And once they start looking too scrunchy, I'll scrunch them further, or fold them to give them interesting textures (this works best with plain papers), and pretend I meant it all along.

As for receiving your own wrapping paper back, well - that just shows that someone else is an environmentally conscious as you are. Whyever would that be a bad thing?

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

The same thing happens with books in my family - we're all quite happy to receive second-hand books in good condition, because it means we get more books for the same price. And yet I know people who cannot think of anything worse than receiving a pre-loved book, even if receiving a new one means that you cannot get anything else, and the book you wanted is no longer in print.

Start rant here:
Exclamations of horror were heard throughout the land when my SO gave me a pre-loved book for my 21st. It was in mint condition, by one of my favourite authors, and unavailable new. I had no problems with it, why should they? Yet he was told off, in front of me by well-meaning people who hadn't thought about what I want as opposed to what they want.
End rant here.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

I'm so anti-wrapping paper that I generally don't wrap my gifts to people. Instead I carry them hidden in a bag or sack and present them to people in person. Let the trees live another few days, I say.

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

Same here. I have a horror of unnecessary packaging. And when I receive something wrapped in beautiful paper, I tend to save the paper just for the pleasure of looking at it :-)

It's the thought that counts...

[placeboid.livejournal.com]

Glad to see my family is not the only one that recycles Xmas paper. It's amazing how offended people can get...one year I reused last years Xmas cards by sticking labels over the inside message and lost a couple of my more superficial friends...

The best way to recyle at Christmas though is to recycle presents..put all the crap you didn't want last year into a lucky dip and let 'em take their pick!(This way you can't be accused of being insensitive for deliberatly giving them back what they gave you last year...because if they do you can say it was a random accident rather than a cynical attempt to remind people that they shouldn't just buy crap because they feel obliged by commercially set paradigms)

I wish Jesus would drag his 4000 year old corpse from the ground(or from behind the rock as the case may be)and do a Christmas lecture tour. If the first world donated the entire silly season expenditure to the suffering and needy then we wouldn't have third world anymore.

Christmas makes me want to be sick!

Re: It's the thought that counts...

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

Historically, my family doesn't use Christmas cards, either. When we're giving presents to each other, we're right there, so it's usually just the message on a square of paper, stuck on using the sticky tape that's holding the wrapping paper on.

And the message is usually something funny, or insulting, or whatever. Like the year Dad had been complaining about not being able to find teatowels when he wanted them, so amongst other things I went and got him a whole stack of cheap teatowels. Being the traditional distributor of presents (they get stacked up, and when we're all there, one person hands them all out and that's usually me as smallest and youngest and least drunk), I could ensure that he got them in the proper order:
The first one was labelled 'Daddy One' and had one teatowel in.
The second one was labelled 'Daddy Two' and had two in.
The third was labelled 'Daddy Three', and he refused to open it on the grounds that he was laughing too hard...

When Dad wraps his presents, he rarely bothers to label whose it is at all.