Part of the Gift

Why do we wrap presents in wrapping paper? It helps to preserve the secret of the gift, but a cardboard box would serve that purpose just as well. It gives the giver a blank slate on which to write down whom the gift is for, but most cardboard boxes do the same. It seems to me that a person could, in many cases, forgo the wrapping, and the gift would be just as good.

Yet, I think that there is some purpose to wrapping gifts in wrapping paper. It makes the presents look prettier, it makes the gift more fun to open, and it shows the receiver that the giver was willing to put in a lot of extra, pointless work, just to make receiving the gift a little bit more enjoyable. In some ways, the paper itself, and the work that went into wrapping it around the present, is part of the present.

There are some traditions that we do just for tradition's sake, and wrapping the presents in colorful paper might be one of them, but now that I think about it, I think that the wrapping paper does serve a purpose, albeit a small one. It makes the gift just a little bit nicer than it already was. Now, whether that's worth the extra amount of work  the wrapping process requires is up to each individual to decide, but as long as it's not too much extra work, I think that wrapping a present up in wrapping paper can, in some small way, improve the quality of the gift.