Newsprint, silk, glossy… Narrow and wide ribbons, bows and stickers… The attention we pay to packaging reflects the properties of our nature and our attitude towards other people.
Some carefully choose the color of the paper and diligently tie bows, others use second-hand – packaging from previous gifts. Someone entrusts this responsible business to professionals, because they doubt their own skills. But the hardest of all is for those whom the need not only to give a gift, but also to “decorate” it plunges into despondency or even infuriates.
“Packaging is an extra headache, which is added to the pre-New Year’s running around,” complains 46-year-old Anna. “After all, there was a time when gifts were given just like that.” Indeed, we began to pack them again only in the mid-1990s: the time of scarcity was replaced by relative abundance, when a variety of packaging appeared. How did the tradition originate?
Packaging makes almost any item what it really should be: a surprise
“Until the end of the XNUMXth century, gifts were presented completely open, and they began to pack them in the United States – this was a good incentive for the development of a new branch of trade,” says sociologist Martin Perrault. “At first they used inexpressive and rough kraft paper, then patterned paper, cellophane, colored ribbons were invented, which were a great success.”
Large enterprises, trying to emphasize the exclusivity of the brand, created their own packaging style. And of course, we know for sure that in Russia at the end of the XNUMXth century, Christmas gifts (for those who had them at all) “were under the Christmas tree in packages.”
Alexei Tolstoy described in “Nikita’s Childhood” Christmas in a noble family, a holiday prepared for his own and for peasant children. “In the same place, under the tree, there were paper bags with gifts for boys and girls, wrapped in multi-colored scarves. You could hear the nuts cracking, the shells crunching underfoot, the children breathing through their noses as they unwrapped the gift bags.”
Complex motives
Today, golden times have come for packaging lovers: ribbons, balls, flowers, paper of any size, color, pattern, density; ready-made boxes and bags, colored cardboard to do everything yourself …
“Most of us give not so much gifts as pleasure,” says family psychotherapist Inna Khamitova. “And the packaging makes almost any item what it is supposed to be: a surprise.”
The main thing is not to be afraid of anything, try and do it the way you want. Surprise, delight, intrigue. After all, packaging shows, first of all, how much attention we are ready to give to another person.
Denis, who is now 50 years old, recalls with pleasure his unusual gift to the girl he was passionately in love with: “It was a real heap of bright packages nested one inside the other. I spent a lot of time making them. It turned out great: the paper shimmered with all colors, the ribbons twisted into beautiful rings …
I didn’t put anything inside. It was empty. It seems to me that she understood that this is how I wanted to express my love, a feeling so intangible that it was impossible to “give” it in another way.
Whom to entrust the adhesive tape and scissors to?
Beautiful, expensive packaging can cause embarrassment and even irritation. It seems that we should respond to a chic gift in the same way, but at the same time we do not feel in ourselves any resources, opportunities, or talents. In this case, you should entrust the matter to professionals. They are easy to find in large stores in special departments. Believe me, it’s worth it! “We become adults, we stop believing in miracles: everything is predictable, there are no more secrets,” says psychoanalyst Svetlana Fedorova. “Perhaps gift wrapping will become one of the little things that allow you to return the feeling of magic, to be back in childhood, to play hide and seek, wrapping, “masking” a gift.” And instead of awkwardness, self-confidence and New Year’s mood will come
“Such an unusual gift could seem cruel,” analyzes Inna Khamitova, “to puzzle, upset. But, if the woman correctly deciphered the message, she could really be charmed. After all, how else to give the intangible (love, tenderness, joy)?”
Usually packaging is still an addition, a way to add more charm to the item that is inside. She can raise his “status” and tell the recipient about our desire to somehow distinguish him, distinguish him from others, show that he is special to us, that we are not just fulfilling a formality by giving him our gift.
Lisa, 40, says she began carefully wrapping gifts in defiance of her mother, who always used old paper left over from past holidays. “I remember that everything was the same for everyone and ugly, careless, and I didn’t like it. And I came up with – one day I wrapped each gift in a newspaper page, where there was a headline that made sense.
Since then, I have often used this idea. I collect pages during the year, I think, I estimate. Yes, I love doing it!”
creative dialogue
Who gets more pleasure: the one who wraps or the one who unfolds? “Packaging, we rejoice that we are doing something with our own hands, and also fantasize about the reaction of the person who will receive our product,” says psychoanalytic psychotherapist Svetlana Fedorova. “We can also like the fact that a person will receive as if two gifts.”
For Lisa, each of her loved ones is special; she thinks over the packaging in advance, looking for the most accurate (for this person) words. In this search, she herself manifests itself: her character traits (a perfectionist, loves to do everything perfectly), professional pleasure (she is a journalist) and even her political views (headlines always have subtext).
But 28-year-old Marina plays on a variety of textures of packaging materials. “Depending on who I want to give a gift to, I choose silk paper, craft, shiny, matte or glossy…” she says. The choice is never random.
For my husband, for example, I’m looking for something with a bust – too thick or too thin paper, very bright or completely white. This person does nothing halfway, always goes to the end and prefers excess to mediocrity. I find packaging to match his extremes. This ritual has turned into a kind of game between us: he can’t stand it and a few days before the holiday he always asks, laughing, what else did I come up with … “
Signs of love and attention
The appearance of a gift is no less important than its contents. “Thoughtfully packaged, it can bring more pleasure than an expensive gift, packed somehow,” comments Inna Khamitova. The more attention we paid to the design, the stronger our attachment to the addressee.
By our actions, we make it clear to him that we wanted to devote our time to him, openly admit: “I want to please you and I am not shy about it.” We put on a small performance, arrange the presentation of the gift in a directorial way, trying to arouse the delight of the discovery in the recipient.
Watching gifts being opened is a special treat. It is a mysterious moment from childhood that we unconsciously wish we could relive. After all, we remember how we trembled with impatience, tearing open the packaging to finally see it!
“Most people are happy with beautifully packaged gifts: someone carefully opens the package, trying not to damage it, someone passionately tears it to get to the gift faster, it depends on the character,” says Svetlana Fedorova. – However, some do not like wrapped gifts, just as they do not like sentimentality – perhaps because they are not used to being taken care of. Or they just forgot how to be surprised.
To create a festive mood, it is enough to get involved in the preparation for it.
45-year-old Olga, having received a beautiful gift from Santa Claus at a corporate party, burst into tears: “No one has given me such beauty for a long time … Only my mother. In childhood”. Childhood memories evoke very strong emotions, because they tell us important information: not only Santa Claus, but I myself exist, they took care of me, I am important, I am, I am good!
So cast aside doubts, if they still remain, and pick up paper and scissors. “To create a festive mood, it is enough to get involved in the preparations for it,” says ethnologist Emmanuel Lalleman. “When we come up with, prepare and pack a gift ourselves, this means that we want to be truly present in it, we put ourselves into it and generally appreciate that special kind of communication that is giving a gift…”
This is probably why after the holidays, many of us remember not so much gifts as packaging. And the amount of drink has nothing to do with it.