AI Transcription
Never fear, the regularly scheduled Monday newsletter will come out Tuesday. This week in the US, Monday is the federal holiday for Christmas. For some strange reason, people choose to use that day off work to spend it with friends and family rather than diligently waiting by their inbox for me to email them. Not gonna lie, that's a little insulting, but I'll get over it. In the meantime, I thought I'd send out my discussion thread that's normally just for paid subscribers to everyone.
This week's topic is a doozy and is highly relevant. Most of you should have gotten some firsthand experience with it yesterday, unless you were very naughty. In that case, enjoy your coal. For everybody else: What's the right way to open Christmas presents? Do you tear them open like you’re cocaine bear ripping into a cooked turkey, or do you carefully peel back the wrapping paper, picking away at the tape and making sure not to damage it?
So for ninety-nine percent of my life, I thought that second group was a myth. I thought the only way to open a gift was to seek and destroy. Then I got married. In my wife's family, there is more than one person who carefully peels back the tape to get the wrapping paper off in one piece. I don't get it. Wrapping paper is a one-use item. You destroy it and it's gone for. I have never in my life seen anyone reuse wrapping paper. That includes my wife's family. I think they just don't want to destroy something beautiful. It's the exact opposite of Fight Club. It also might be because they don't wanna make a mess. If you tear wrapping paper into a thousand pieces, then you have a thousand pieces to pick up. Counterpoint: Christmas is about living in the moment, and I will create a million pieces if I have to to get to that sweet, sweet pair of socks. Okay, I don't get socks. I'm an adult. I ask for whiskey and hot sauce every year, and that's exactly what I get. Christmas is the best.
And don't even get me started on gift bags. Obviously you don't have to tear a gift bag to pull a gift out of it. In fact, if you do ruin the gift bag in the process, you are probably doing Christmas very wrong, even by cocaine bear standards. I'm not all about saving gift bags. I didn't even know that was a thing. Then, again, I got married and I realized that no gift bags have been purchased in the last twenty-five years. They are just passed back and forth between friends and family members. The same twenty-five bags. Seriously, put a little number on the bottom of it and watch. In a couple years, that'll filter back to you, like, six different times. It's a beautiful system. It's a great way of reuse, recycle, protect the earth, all that nonsense. I get it. I was previously never one to save gift bags because I kind of hoped that maybe, just maybe, this was the last time anyone would give gifts. Maybe by this time next year everyone would just buy the stuff they need. I'm not sure where that leaves kids. Maybe they should get jobs. But I'm in the minority on gift bags. Pretty much everybody saves them. Everybody reuses them.
But what about wrapping paper? Do you launch in like Cookie Monster going after a sleeve of Girl Scout thin mints, or do you carefully pry away the wrapping paper like you're an archeologist digging for dinosaur bones? Let me know in the comments.
Discussion Thread: The Wrong Way to Unwrap Gifts