Christmas should come in Bags not Boxes

Years ago, I convinced a beautiful, charming teenage woman to enter a legal contract designed to sell her as chattel to my whims. Our business arrangement was based on the principle of specialization for men and women as follows:

"Specialization of marriage is a powerful force in a family, benefiting the husband and children alike. Parents produce more when they occupy specialized roles, so they can offer higher quality homes, cars, furniture and clothes while raising their own children." - Duke Glorystone

Fast forward about a decade. The system is working well. Only problem is I never know jack about all the "obvious" special rules the Boss has for our family. Example:

I take money from my specialized labor role and purchase presents and trinkets to go in her stocking at Christmas. I assume the stocking itself is its own wrapping and hence do not wrap any items in the stocking. During our joyous Christmas celebration I am informed this is heartless, thoughtless and am shamed into wrapping all items in the stocking. 

Needless to say I've carried a chip on my shoulder ever since about wrapping presents. Not only is uncouth to not wrap everything in the stocking, putting a gift in a bag to avoid wrapping is an insult as well. So I wrap everything in a grudge and I hate it. 

Well this year after picking up bag after bag of wrapping waste and boxes, I had a wonderful idea. A beautiful awful idea!

Why should there be so much waste? And as a side benefit, why all this blasted wrapping? I think we all know its bad for the environment, but educate yourself with my totally legit internet research: http://www.recycleworks.org/resident/holiday_facts.html

Facts on Holiday Waste From Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, household waste increases by more than 25%. Added food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons all add up to an additional 1 million tons a week to our landfills (Source: EPA). In the U.S., annual trash from gift-wrap and shopping bags totals 4 million tons (Source: Use Less Stuff). Cards An estimated 2.6 billion holiday cards are sold each year in the United States, enough to fill a football field 10 stories high. Electronic holiday greeting cards, offered through a variety of websites, are a convenient, no-cost, waste-free alternative (Source: CalRecycle). If we each sent one less card, we'd save 50,000 cubic yards of paper (Source: Use Less Stuff). Here are ideas to recycle, buy recycled and reuse cards. Ribbons If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet (Source: CalRecycle). Food At least 28 billion pounds of edible food are wasted each year - equating to over 100 pounds per person (Source: Use Less Stuff). Paper Half of the paper America consumes is used to wrap and decorate consumer products (Source: The Recycler's Handbook, 1990).  Holiday Trees Approximately 33 million live Christmas trees are sold in North America every year (Source: EPA). To help prevent waste from cutting down and disposing of live trees, you can buy a potted tree and plant it after the holidays.  Gifts The average American spends $800 on gifts over the holiday season (Source: American Research Group). According to a national survey, 70% of Americans would welcome less emphasis on gift giving and spending (Source: Center for a New American Dream). About 40% of all battery sales occur during the holiday season. Buy rechargeable batteries to accompany your electronic gifts, and consider giving a battery charger as well. Rechargeable batteries reduce the amount of potentially harmful materials thrown away, and can save money in the long run (Source: EPA). Transportation If each family reduced holiday gasoline consumption by one gallon (about twenty miles), we'd reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one million tons (Source: Use Less Stuff).

So next year, I'm going to do my part, by NOT WRAPPING A DANG THING. Its all going to come in bags that get re-used every year and a stocking is a perfectly acceptable wrapper. SAVE THE EARTH!!

and my sanity.