On the Topic of Christmas Bows

I'm wrapping presents today and started ruminating about bows. I wonder how many people really THINK about bows? I think bows get shortchanged.

I love bows, especially the real fancy ones that are tightly looped. Deep reds and greens make me salivate but I appreciate a good white, cream, silver, and gold bow too. Cheap bows annoy me. Why bother?

Some people THROW bows away after unwrapping a gift. I have never understood this. It's not like they wear out or anything - they are perfectly good!

I always dive for the bows and save them, but not after hawking out the situation to make sure the recipient isn't saving bows too. It's not very classy to snatch a good bow away from a bow-saver. It can get kind of embarrassing. I've recycled some bows several times. This is a matter of great pride.

You have to divide your bows into categories before wrapping. Some people, like my father-in-law, get the cheap bows because NOTHING in his house is allowed to hit the floor in the form of trash and bows fit this category. He just stuffs them in the bag and I learned long ago not to complain. (Just dig 'em out later.)

Some people KNOW you recycle bows and just remove the bow and hand it to me. This is quick and easy. Other people have to be told to give me the bow. If they put the bow in the box with the gift, I've learned to ask if they save bows too. Especially if it's a really, really GOOD bow, because they may not realize what they have. Heaven forbid they return home, stack the box and throw away the bow!

The more often you recycle your bows, the cheaper they get to use. If you take the cost of the entire bag of bows and divide it by the number of bows in the bag, you get the FIRST price. But then the price is HALVED each time you recycle it. Pretty soon your bows are costing you fractions of a penny and this HAS to be good for the universe.

If you buy bows one year but don't use them all, you will have them for the following year. Finding a bag of last year's bows is ALMOST as good as getting a bag of bows free! After all, the cost of the bag is depreciated from last year - so it's much cheaper.

Packages with good bows don't need ribbon - ribbon is redundant. The only time you should use ribbon is if you're curling it - and you have to work pretty darn hard to make a curling ribbon "bow" look half-way decent. A well-done curly bow is a work of art.

Bows should be dead-on center of the package - not placed in some obscure corner, throwing off the balance of things. Especially well-done curly bows. They need to cascade JUST SO.

:-)Kim