Please keep blood off the gifts

...a dispatch from holi-daze

Picture Santa’s workshop from December 1-24. Then picture the busy booth in which I stood 40 hours each week a few eons back when I was a girl. A good girl working and attending college, too.

Every weekend and some weekday nights, (here comes an uncharacteristically long sentence), I wrapped pricey packages at an ultra high-end store which was packed with patrons purchasing gadgets and gizmos aplenty plus whozits and whatsits galore.

At Christmastime, we asked if the customer preferred angels or reindeer or endless Noels. We wrapped gaily while getting tons of paper cuts, surrounded by signs inside the booth (well-hidden from customers) that said Please Keep Blood Off the Gifts. 

We were dressed as elves. My belt was big and my cheeks were red to match the jaunty jacket and hat. Meanwhile, cheery Christmas tunes played on perpetual repeat as we customized color, size, sparkle and embellishments for sleighfuls of gifts.

T’was the season to be shopping, I mean T’was the season to be grateful and jolly, but some customers were tired and cranky – having spent, in a few hours – what wrappers like us might earn in a year.

At non-holiday times, I also served as Assistant Head Wrapper with birthdays in color and weddings, all white. Speaking of birthdays, one woman asked us to wrap her in minimal clothing as a gift for her fiancé.  We had to decline.   One asked us to gift wrap a llama.  For that, we settled on one large, but very soft velvety bow that perfectly matched the llama’s large velvety eyes.  

A few years later, I got a way easier job – packaging New York and Vogue and Vanity Fair. Magazines were vibrant and bustling and cool then. Some were very cool. Freelancers took people we didn’t know to places we hadn’t seen, connecting, combining, and cutting with just the right words in just the right number. It wasn’t all the news. Just all the news that fit.