Christmas Wrapping

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"Christmas Wrapping" (sometimes misspelled as "Christmas Wrappings") is a Christmas song recorded in 1981 by The Waitresses. It was first released on the 1981 various artists holiday compilation album A Christmas Record on ZE Records. The group also included the track on their 1981 EP I Could Rule the World if I Could Only Get the Parts. It has since been included on numerous holiday compilation albums, including Now That's What I Call Christmas!: The Signature Collection.

The song is narrated from the point of view of a busy single woman who is adamant that she will try to sit-out the exhausting Christmas period, not participating in the traditional Christmas activities (except for making dinner, see below).

She reveals that, during the course of the year, she has attempted to meet up with a man she encountered in a ski shop the previous year. Despite the couple's attempts to meet, a succession of mishaps conspires to keep them apart.

Finally on Christmas Eve, while the protagonist (after stating that A&P provided her with "the world's smallest turkey") is doing last-minute shopping for cranberries at a local convenience store, ends up running into the man after discovering that he, too, forgot to buy cranberries.

This coincidence seems to hint that the narrator, and therefore the listener, shouldn't completely abandon their faith in the magic of Christmas.

The song was covered by the Spice Girls in 1998 as a B-side for their single "Goodbye". The group Save Ferris also recorded a version with different lyrics. Kate Nash has also covered the song.