Many years ago, I watched in awe as my Grandma Mason’s fingers folded and tucked the colorful Christmas paper around the rectangular box. She carefully placed tape beneath corners so the shiny strips wouldn’t show. Like a well-tuned John Deere bailer, she pulled red and green ribbon around the wrapped box, tied the knot, created a multi-looped bow and finished the process by curling the ends of the ribbon with an open pair of scissors. Unimpressed by her own work, she quickly reached for another gift box and began the entire process again.

Grandma had a God-given gift for wrapping the perfect gift. Her talent has yet to be surpassed by any peppy little sorority girl working during her college break at the congeniality counter at Belk. Each December she and I used to spread all the family’s presents on the bed in the “blue room”—Grandma’s bedrooms were named for the paint color on the walls, obviously not by the feeling one gets while in them—and with great precision and ease she would transform a stack of oddly shaped boxes into an array of festive jewels that would shame any Miller and Rhoads holiday window display.

I was merely an apprentice in those days; dedicated to learning the dying art of gift wrapping. At 48, I am unfortunately still an apprentice and often desecrate the art. Many of my final products take on the appearance of a package that has fallen from a UPS truck and mercilessly run over by a week’s worth of traffic.

Whenever I get a weird look from someone receiving one of my lovely packages, I just say, “Hey, it’s wrapped, ain’t it?” If I’ve covered the gift with enough paper to conceal the artist’s name on a CD or my wife is unable to make out the words “Hoover Hand-held Power Vac” through the paper, I feel like I’ve done my job.

What is it with holiday wrap these days? Beginning around Halloween, schools, churches, scouts, youth groups and many non-profit organizations start selling it in droves. Before you know it you’ve spent more money on the wrapping than on the gifts. And where can you store all that stuff? The basement, the attic, the garage and every nook and cranny is already packed with off-season clothes and who knows what. There’s always the hall closet. Of course now every time you go for a coat, you are hit by an avalanche of Santas, angels, reindeer and snowmen.

When I am prepared to condemn myself to the hours it takes to wrap a few gifts, the dining room table is cleared; the wrapping paper is laid out along with a roll of Scotch tape, a pair of scissors and piles of bows and tangled ribbon. I usually begin with gift boxes that are easiest to wrap such as the Milton Bradley games, boxed curling irons, books and anything else in a pleasant rectangular or square shape.

I roll out the paper, estimate the amount it will take to completely cover the box and begin my cutting with sewing scissors which have already been dulled from cutting off the top out of the Christmas tree that was somehow two-feet taller than the room when it was brought into the house. After three or four tries and miles of wasted Christmas wrap, I have completely covered the package so it resembles a first grade papier-mâché project gone terribly wrong.

My first bad words of the holiday season are usually uttered during the course of untangling the Christmas lights I thought I had so carefully stored last year; my second profanity extravaganza usually comes as I laboriously try to find the end of the Scotch tape each time I’m ready to apply a piece to another ill-folded corner of a package. Using a fingernail which is no longer there because of holiday stress, I pick at what I think is the end of tape roll. Five minutes later when I still don’t have any tape off the roll, I decide that manufacturers call this stuff “invisible tape” not because I can’t see it when it is applied to the package, but because I can never see where the roll ends and begins.

When the corners are finally sealed with strips of mutilated tape, and the ribbon is wrapped around the package, I crudely imitate Grandma by attempting to make a bow which results in a mass of twisted loops, Boy Scout knots, and frayed ribbon. The end result looks more like a fur ball that the cat might cough up than a finishing touch on a Christmas package.

Speaking of finishing touches, you may wonder if I ever curl the ends of my ribbon with an open pair of scissors. Real men don’t eat quiche and real men don’t curl their ribbon with an open pair of scissors. We can cut a load of firewood with the help of a Poulan chainsaw and a weighted axe, but let us curl Christmas ribbon, and we’ll end up getting stitches at the emergency room. I promise.

For some reason, the packages I wrap seem to migrate to the back of the Christmas tree where they are hidden by the more professionally wrapped gifts from my wife and daughters. I guess I should be upset, but if you’ve seen some of my wrapped creations, you’d understand why you’ve never seen them. My only consolation is that after all the gifts have been opened and my wife’s eyes are filled with tears of joy as she tries out her new Hoover Hand-held Power Vac—instead of the two karat diamond she was expecting—all the beautiful wrapping and lovely bows with their scissor-curled ends make their way into a big ol’ Hefty bag no matter how the outside of the gift was prepared.

Grandma could wrap with the best of them. For years I watched her spin her magic in the “blue room,” but I guess some things just cannot be inherited. Some genes are passed from one generation to another while others are not. For instance, my Cousin Byron could belch on command. I practiced and practiced, and one great, unforgettable day, I mastered my Cousin Byron’s culturally forbidden talent. Unfortunately, it was during one of Preacher Greene’s Sunday sermons.

In the long run, I believe my family would have been a lot happier if I had learned the art of curling the ends of ribbon with an open pair of scissors instead of being able to belch on command.