THESE NEW OLD TRADITIONS

Continuing our series on “Gifts & Giving” honky-tonk singer-songwriter sensation, Zara Bode, offers a suggestion on how to make even a store-bought gift personal.

Get out your blinders, put in your earplugs, and (if you haven’t already) throw your TV out the window. These are the precautions we must take in order to best avoid the commercial slam of the holidays. There’s little we can do to fight it, but year after year, in our last efforts we will take the ideals of the “perfect gift” and fight back with homemade bath salts, jams (yes please!), or more likely end up denouncing gifts for the season altogether.

But what we forget is that the offense is not in the practice, but in the presentation. A gift should be seen as a communication, a statement from one to the other that they are loved, welcomed, and appreciated. This is why I wrap my presents with the same pride in presentation, as I would decorate my home for the welcoming of guests. If you want to be a grinch, go ahead, but I’m hoping to reclaim the heart in this holiday tradition, by trying to find the beauty in the exchange.

I’ll admit, there is little I love more then the look of presents under the tree. Like a child, I am overcome by the thrill of the unknown, enclosed in tempting swaths of colored paper! Despite my enthusiasm, my family (as well as many others I’m sure) have instilled an “expect the worst” kind of attitude towards gift giving during the holidays. While my parents have pretty exceptional taste in the every-day, under the tree there’s mostly sweaters that don’t fit, books I would never read, ugly things that somehow I already owned, and the candles…always with the candles!

Due to this humorous yet unfortunate truth, I’ve taken it upon myself to always find awesome useable gifts, but more to rule that the wrapping be a vital part of the gift giving experience. It’s a way of saying, “Even though I didn’t make this Bodum single-cup french press, or these SmartWool Socks, these added little flourishes will let you know that it came from the heart.”

The tradition of presents or wrapping them by western standards is fairly new. While the Romans would give gifts to one another during festivals like Saturnalia, the winter solstice, and the Roman New Year, early on the Church discouraged the practice of gift giving because of its pagan associations. Early wrapping styles consisted of thick brown paper, twine, and sealing wax. It would be much later, in the late 1800’s, that paper was mass-produced, and years more before prints or adhesive were available.

The earliest record of wrapping comes from Japan. Furoshiki is a traditional style of wrapping that some historians date back to as early as 700AD. The word refers to the bundle one would use to carry clothes to and from the public baths, and literally translates to “bath spread.” This origami style approach to folding cloth became so useful that eventually the practice extended to the use of transporting goods and wrapping gifts. Tsutsumi, which is the addition of paper to this process is equally beautiful and extremely ornamented. Not only is this a wonderfully artistic way to approach the craft, but the cloth is also a functional addition to your gift. (Check out Youtube for hundreds of videos and “how-tos.”)

When I have the means I use a fine selection of paper, silk, or cloth, garnished with ribbons or earth, but most of the time I make my own wrapping. I surely won’t be the first to tell you that the holidays bring on an additional 5-million tons of waste due to wrap and packaging. So why not make a tradition to help clean out the piles on your desk or the clothes in your closets for decoration this year? I have used everything from Metalica T-shirts, to vintage magazines, decrepit books, reusable shopping bags, or my pièce de resistance: using VHS tape as ribbon.

By all means get creative, and use this holiday season as an opportunity to tell someone you love them, all the while creating your own spins on old traditions.

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Zara is in the Brooklyn-based honky-tonk band, The Sweetback Sisters. In her spare time she sing’s “oooOooo” in studios throughout the city, makes pancakes, and runs an online vintage shop.