Gift shopping, gift wrapping

I can with complete confidence say that my Christmas shopping is finished.  The last gift items were purchased today.  It involved a drive through the first major snowfall of the season to hit this part of Ontario.  I’m glad I wasn’t driving.  Dad was excited though to test out the new tires on his beloved truck.  As we headed north and west over the otherwise angular roads of this region, I forgot how the snow falls horizontally here.  The early settlers, eager to build and develop, cleared most of the forests in Perth, Huron, Wellington, and Bruce counties.  The result is fairly flat country with only sporadic, small hardwood forests.  This can make even the most minor snowfall a challenging experience on local roads.  It has to be pretty bad though to keep most people at home around here though.  The alternative is staying at home and being bored all winter.  Life and work need to go on.  Today’s snow was classified as a “flurry” by meteorologists.  It would be a squall anywhere else.  The actual squalls around here are much worse.  I finally got to wear the new winter boots I bought three weeks ago in Ottawa.  It only took yesterday’s eight hour car trip across the southern portion of Ontario to make that possible.

There’s a great satisfaction in having the Christmas shopping finished.  The only task left is gift wrapping, a tedious but necessary task.  I still like using wrapping paper and scotch tape.  I’ve never fully accepted paper or cloth gift bags.  They lack the challenge of tearing apart paper to find out what was being concealed.  Removing a gift from a bag is so instant, there’s less of an element of surprise.  There also isn’t that comfortable mess of ankle-deep ripped wrapping paper that generally fills the living room floor Christmas morning.  Family and friends cannot throw gift bags at each other after opening gifts like they can with wrapping paper.  Nor do gift bags come on a cardboard tube that once empty can also be used in sword fights or hit on heads among siblings, cousins, and even the more senior members of the family.