Thursday Thoughts: December 18, 2025
By the Rev. Dr. Dennis E. Morey
Faith Presbyterian Church, Cedar Rapids, IA
The Unwrapping Plan
“Would you like that gift wrapped?” We used to hear those words often as the weeks and days progress toward Christmas. Today we pick out the paper and do much of the wrapping ourselves. Christmas has taken on not only finding the right gift at the right price but also wrapping it in the right paper. Americans spend millions of dollars each year on wrapping paper, most of which gets thrown away once the gift hits the hands of the receiver. Each year, Americans spend more than $12.7 billion on gift wrap, which is a wild figure when you stop to consider that wrapping paper gets torn to shreds in under 60 seconds. It’s designed to get thrown away, and yet we spend so much money on it.
An estimated 4.6 million pounds of wrapping paper gets produced in the U.S. annually. And each year, we send about 2.3 million pounds – half of all the gift wrap made in one year – to our overflowing landfills.
Seeing the brightly colored paper, reading the tag, and feeling the weight of the contents add to the anticipation of the moment when the contents are revealed. Suppose when you received a gift you decided to just keep it wrapped so you could admire the pretty paper.
Suppose you thought you knew the gift could not possibly be better the wrapping paper, so you did not bother to unwrap it.
There is a real danger of this happening to God’s GIFT during this season. We pay so much attention to all the things outside the baby in the manger that we often don’t get to the real GIFT. There are cards, carols, candles, parties, presents, pageants, tools, trees, toys, relatives, reunions, and many meals all wrapped around the celebration of God’s GIFT. Peeling away each layer of celebration and preparation can be exhausting. Finally, when Christmas Day comes, we are either enthralled with the wrapping, all those events that led up to the day, or we are exhausted by them and we fail to actually get to the GIFT.
Today, we have some time to re-think our plan to unwrap the GIFT God has for us. We read in the story that his mother, Mary, wrapped Him in “swaddling clothes” and laid Him in a manger. Since then, we have been invited to “Come and see what the Lord has done” by picking up the GIFT holding Him close to us and taking Him home. Many times, we embrace the child and then begin wrapping Him in layers and layers of Christmas-kind of things that only threaten to smother Him. God’s GIFT is better than the wrapping paper. We will never know the real blessing of what God has for us in Christ, so long as we are content to keep Him wrapped up.
When we receive this GIFT for ourselves, we find that wherever we take Him, whether it is to work, or school, when we are out with our friends or on a business trip, or when we are in a period of sadness or confusion, or extreme happiness, He is the GIFT that is always just what we need.
While the wrapping paper, that beautiful scene of the baby lying there in the manger adored by Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and angels, is a beautiful one, we need to remember there is more to the GIFT than just His beginning. He lived, taught, died, and rose again, and now by the power of the Holy Spirit, lives in the hearts and lives of all those who place their faith in Him.
Let’s not get so wrapped up in those pre-celebrations that we forget to unwrap what God has for us. When we accept this GIFT, unwrap Him for ourselves, there is a change in everything we do. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (II Corinthians 5:17 NRSV)
