Thing To Do Today: wrap.

 What's the worst part of Christmas?

What's the best?

Answers will vary, but wrapping the presents will be near the top of many lists. 

What with cutting the paper just too small again, and what with getting the sticky tape twisted up on itself and then losing the end of the blasted stuff; what with searching fruitlessly through the curling left-overs of paper for a piece big enough to cover that paperback that Cousin Rodney might like (even though he actually never reads books) and what with wondering how many trees have been chopped down to make the paper (and feeling guilty because the shiny pattern might mean it's not recyclable (or feeling guilty because there's no shiny stuff on the paper and it looks cheap)); what with resenting being guilt-tripped into using string instead of tape (it all keeps coming undone!) and what with wondering how on earth you wrap a flipping rocking horse...

Ah well! 

At least the parcels will be lovely when they're all piled up under the tree.

Until the cat pees on them.

Thing To Do Today: wrap. This word is marked origin unknown in my dictionary, but there's a Proto-Indo-European root werp- which means to turn or wind (werp is a lovely word!), which might be something to do with it; or it might be related to the word lap (as in Formula 1).

The first known mention of wrapping paper was in 1715.