Covering Holiday Details Volunteer Wrappers Take Care Of Busy Last-Minute Shoppers
These wrappers don’t need rhyme or rhythm. They need caffeine. As the days before Christmas count down, business for the folks who wrap presents gears up. They’re at Coeur d’Alene Plaza, they’re at Silver Lake Mall. And those manning the tape and scissors in mall halls Sunday weren’t getting paid themselves.
The plight of the fumbling folks who can’t (or won’t) wrap their own gifts makes for a heckuva fund-raising opportunity.
“Christmas Eve last year, I wrapped 82 presents for one man,” declared Julie Meier, who was wrapping gifts in the Plaza to benefit the Coeur d’Alene Public Library.
All 82 gifts were all for the same lady, and the library charges from $2 to $5 per present. “She must have been some woman,” quipped Meier.
The sleepy Sunday afternoon offered Meier a breather. But she didn’t think it would last long.
“Friday was hectic,” she said with a sigh.
When the volunteers get a little frazzled and tired, they just think about excited, Christmas-eyed kids.
Young ones come up to the table with a trinket they’ve purchased for Mom or Dad. The gifts are small, but they’re huge to the little ones who shell out their allowances to buy them.
Older folks are entertained by the gift-wrapping frenzy, Meier said. “They just like to watch us.”
At times, they end up seeing some major construction. Library volunteers once had to paper up a big carousel horse - with no box. They built one from cardboard scraps and tape.
The busiest night is yet to come: Christmas Eve. “We get a lot of nervous men running around here,” said wrapper Pat Laam.
They were already working up to a jog.
“We’re not sitting around today, either,” declared Joan Foote at Silver Lake Mall. Foote and friends, all members of the local Beta Sigma Phi social sorority, frantically filled the place with the zip of tape and the crinkle of paper. The white-haired woman barely had time to look up from the table.
“This is Christmas-wrapping madness,” Foote said, dressed for the season in a red turtleneck. She has no idea how many gifts she’s wrapped. Lots.
Foote hurriedly shredded a green ribbon into a curly garnish for one package, then pounced upon a sweater.
“I’m working,” she assured a customer.
“No rush,” he consoled.
Members of the women’s club have wrapped gifts in Silver Lake Mall since the place opened. They can’t be stopped.
Arlene Pischner awoke Sunday to find her car caught in a Rathdrum Prairie snowdrift. “But I wouldn’t miss gift wrapping.”
Library supporters wrapped up $2,500 last year. They only kept $1,000 of it, though. Laam said $1,500 went toward materials. A half-roll of swank-looking, gold-and-purple paper cost the library folks $347 this year.
But it’s worth it, the wrappers say. They feel good helping the Johnny-shop-latelies, Laam said.
“And we get to wrap all the expensive things we can’t afford.”
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