Wrappin' It Up

Every Christmas Eve, my husband and I stay long after the kids go to bed, so that we can assemble toys and wrap presents. We usually have some drinks and dessert, and either we listen to Christmas music or we find "A Christmas Story" marathon and have that on in the background. At some point we split up to wrap each other's gifts, and then we finish the night with a cuddle on the couch, eyeing the mountain of presents under the tree.

That is all about to change.

With my quest to live less wastefully, I have decided not to wrap presents this year. Would you believe that 4 million tons of logs are used to create wrapping paper? Only a fastidious minority of gift recipients will open the packages delicately without tearing it, with the intention of reusing it for another gift; paper gift bags and tissue are only marginally more likely to be saved and used another time. This year, Santa will be giving us our gifts in cloth sacks. And isn't that the image that many of us have of Santa, a sack thrown over his shoulder as he heads down the chimney, sacks of toys piled up in his reindeer-drawn sleigh?

The kids were very excited to learn that Santa has gone green, and it coincides with the idea that the paper that they use for their millions of drawings indeed comes from trees, and those trees must be conserved. My husband, while supportive of my new endeavor, is a bit disappointed. But I promise him that late-night Christmas Eve still belongs to the two of us alone.

Remembering that UrbanEcoMama is trying to do all this on a budget, here is how it breaks down: I've spent $50 on 5 large cloth sacks that I intend to use for many years. How many years will it take me to have saved that much by not buying holiday wrapping paper? Answer unknown. I also do still have about half a dozen partially used rolls of wrapping paper that have accumulated over the years, and I will continue to use those sparingly. And what about gifts I give outside of my family? I didn't purchase a variety of sizes for those presents to my father-in-law, the girls' teachers, or my friends. But if I were to give them gifts in a pretty cloth sack, how do I delicately ask for the bag back?