Four of his elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones,
so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.

 

~Stress~

Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more...

  

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where...

 

More stress...

  

Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked, and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys. So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of apple cider, a shot of rum & a Cuban cigar. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor, and there was nothing to drink. 

  

Even more stress...

 

He checked his humidor and they had removed all his Cuban Montecristo No 2s..

  

In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider pot, and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor. Santa was close to the breading point now.

  

Too much stress!

  

He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw end of the broom.

Just then the doorbell rang, and irritable Santa trudged to the door. He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.

  

The angel said, very cheerfully, "Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn't it a lovely day? I just love the Holiday Season, don't you? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?"

 

Thus began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree...

 

These are simple words, but if we analyze them carefully, we discover an important, yet often overlooked, theological fact: there is no mention of wrapping paper.

If there had been wrapping paper, Matthew would have said so: "And lo, the gifts were inside 600 square cubits of paper. And the paper was festooned with pictures of Frosty the Snowman. And Joseph was going to throweth it away, but Mary saideth unto him, she saideth, 'Holdeth it! That is nice paper! Saveth it for next year!' And Joseph did rolleth his eyeballs. And the baby Jesus was more interested in the paper than the frankincense."

But these words do not appear in the Bible, which means that the very first Christmas gifts were NOT wrapped. This is because the people giving those gifts had two important characteristics:

1. They were wise.

2. They were men.

Men are not big gift wrappers. Men do not understand the point of putting paper on a gift just so somebody else can tear it off. This is not just my opinion, this is a scientific fact based on a statistical survey of two guys I know. One is Rob, who said the only time he ever wraps a gift is "if it's such a poor gift that I don't want to be there when the person opens it." The other is Gene, who told me he does wrap gifts, but as a matter of principle never takes more than 15 seconds per gift. "No one ever had to wonder which presents daddy wrapped at Christmas," Gene said. "They were the ones that looked like enormous spitballs."

I also wrap gifts, but because of some defect in my motor skills, I can never completely wrap them. I can take a gift the size of a deck of cards & put it the exact center of a piece of wrapping paper the size of a regulation volleyball court, but when I am done folding & taping, you can still see a sector of the gift peeking out. (Sometimes I camouflage this sector with a marking pen.)

 If I had been an ancient Egyptian in the field of mummies, the lower half of the Pharaoh's body would be covered only by Scotch tape.

On the other hand, if you give my wife a 12-inch square of wrapping paper, she can wrap a C-130 cargo plane. My wife, like many women, actually likes wrapping things. If she gives you a gift that requires batteries, she wraps the batteries separately, which to me is very close to being a symptom of mental illness.

My point is that gift-wrapping is one of those skills like having babies that come more naturally to women than to men. That is why today I am presenting: