80's CHRISTMAS CLASSICS

THE WAITRESSES

CHRISTMAS WRAPPING
(ORIGINAL 12" LONG VERSION)

One of the problems with Christmas is that it's the time of year when the radio waves and your audio environment around you fills up with so much crap Christmas music with most of the contemporary holiday songs are being shite! But luckily there were some bands that rescued us from this annoyance and gave us some top quality festive songs. This track by The Waitresses has to be one of the best written Christmas songs in the last 30 years. It has a good groove, excellent horn section, the lyrics are good and it doesn't drive you crazy!!! A modern classic!!

Christmas Wrapping was released and recorded in 1981 for the various artists holiday compilation album A Christmas Record on the band's label, ZE Records. The group then included the track on their 1982 EP I Could Rule the World if I Could Only Get the Parts and has since been included on other numerous holiday compilation albums.

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. 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.

CHRISTMAS WRAPPING (ORIGINAL 12" LONG VERSION)

Here's an interesting article I found on the track.
How An Obscure 80's Punk Band Created A Christmas Classic