dazzleberry

It never occurred to me that Santa would wrap gifts, but that's the clear leading option now... My coworker is from Georgia, and she made the comment that her mother understands that Santa doesn't wrap gifts, as opposed to her mother-in-law who tries to wrap them if she's there. So it sparked a conversation of course, and the yankees among the group did seem much more inclined to say that Santa wraps...

And I think it's a generally interesting question.

Santa didn't wrap my gifts until I was a teenager.

'Santa' still comes. My mother is a little psychotic about Santa and the rest of us humor her, but except for stocking stuffers, it all gets wrapped now unless it is just too big or awkward.

I'm not really sure...

I stopped believing in Santa when I was five because my kindegarten teacher told the class that Santa was make-believe. That's one of the hazards of being a small child in the Bible Belt. There's always someone out to make sure the 'real' meaning of Christmas gets out and to debunk all the 'myths'.

So I was never really believed long enough to ask difficult questions of Santa (like, how come his handwriting looks so much like Mom's? and does santa shop at wal mart too, because I saw that wrapping paper there...) So I'm not really sure what all the intricacies are of what Santa is supposed to do.

Photos of Christmases prior to the grinch teacher show that Santa left toys out around the tree-- a doll sitting at a table with a tea set, candyland on the floor with the pieces on the board as though the game had been interrupted, etc. I couldn't say if that was because that's 'what Santa does' or that's 'what mom does'. My mother liked to make Christmas as fantasy-like as possible. I do remember having to wade through balloons to get to the Christmas tree.

As I got older, 'Santa' did start wrapping gifts, but I think it coincided with when I stopped getting up at 4 in the morning and running into the living room to see what was there. Or maybe it coincided with when I started reading tags before I ripped the paper off. If Santa had wrapped gifts when I was six or seven, I would have never known what he brought.

The Santa you know is more energetic than any I've ever met...

Maybe there is something to that Snape-Granger thing after all.