Tolley Wrapping Paper

Every Christmas, the Tolleys gather around a bunch of newspaper-wrapped gifts to celebrate the holiday season. In the past, the presents had numbers on them instead of names, but Grandma would routinely lose the list that matched the present numbers with the kids. As we got older and moved away from home,  grandma started putting our names on the presents. But the tradition of wrapping paper made of newspaper continued. Why did we start using newspaper for wrapping paper? Because Tolley kids couldn’t leave well enough alone. Whenever there was a present under the Christmas tree, each of us would imagine that the present was for us. Someone would eventually lose control and start picking at a corner of the wrapping paper to get a peek at the box beneath it, and pretty soon, all the presents had little corners torn, like everything was wrapped by a dog. So Grandma started using newspaper to wrap presents because it got to be pretty expensive rewrapping  all the torn packages after us kids were through. I’m sure she will tell you that she still uses the newspaper to wrap presents because it’s cheap, but deep down inside, I think that she is remembering us little kids. Then again, maybe I’m wrong. I was never right at guessing the presents, either. I'll  have you know that I never lost the list!!  The first layer of newspaper was sealed with duc tape and the second layer applied to help prevent snooping. Mom