Is it me or is it getting merry in here? I'm Jason Toon, back again with another Christmas edition of Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about the stuff people make, buy, and sell. This week, let's unwrap (sorry) a persistent legend about the humble unsung hero of Christmas morning, wrapping paper. In one view of modern history, the hidden sculptor shaping the malleable clay of humanity to its sinister ends is... Hallmark. Is there an occasion you find too schmaltzy? Does some public expression of emotion seem cloying and insincere? Must be a nefarious plot to hawk more corny cardboard poems! The phrase "Hallmark holiday" is enough of a cliche to have its own Wikipedia page. As rabid birthday-phobe Ron Swanson puts it, "Birthdays were invented by Hallmark to sell cards." But people aren't programmable robots. Hallmark isn't actually that powerful. And they didn't really invent most of the things they're credited or blamed for. Case in point: wrapping paper. People have been wrapping gifts in special paper pretty much since paper was invented. But unlike most Hallmark creation myths, this is one the company themselves have perpetuated.
Why don't they make 'em like this anymore? Pushing the envelope liner Here's the story Hallmark tells. Christmas 1917 was fast approaching. At the Hall Brothers stationery store in Kansas City, Missouri, tissue paper was selling like gangbusters. Like millions of Americans, their customers used the red, green, white, and holly-patterned tissue for wrapping presents. When the store's stock ran out, one of the brothers, Rollie B. Hall, went to their plant to see if there was any more. There wasn't, but Rollie saw a stack of papers imported from France. They were sturdy, intended to be glued inside of envelopes to protect the privacy of the contents. They were printed in fancy patterns, to add a flash of elegance to one's correspondence. They were about the same size as a sheet of tissue. Most of all, they were there. So Rollie took them back to the store. They were such a hit with customers that within a couple of years, Hall Brothers started printing their own wrapping paper, opaque and decorated with repeat patterns. They were the first modern commercial company to do so, and later, as Hallmark, the biggest. I have no reason to doubt the story. But I'm less sure that qualifies as inventing wrapping paper. Hallmark themselves didn't start making that claim until many decades after the fact. Their 1958 video The Art of Gift Wrapping opens with a fanciful gift-wrapping scene from ancient China. "The custom of gift-wrapping has come down to us through the centuries," the narrator says. Neither the video nor the companion booklet mentions anything about Rollie B. Hall's moment of inspiration.
Nary a Rollie to be seen A 1977 Chicago Tribune piece by Charitey Simmons mentions the envelope-liner story, but only at the end of a history of gift-wrapping from ancient China to medieval Baghdad to Elizabethan England. It doesn't even name Hallmark as the store where the envelope liners first turned into wrapping paper. The legend fully blooms in the 1979 memoir/corporate hagiography When You Care Enough by Joyce Hall, Rollie's brother and co-founder. (Yes, to be clear, Joyce was a man.) He stops short of claiming it as the invention of wrapping paper, but only just. "An entire new industry had been born," Joyce writes. "The decorative gift-wrapping business was born the day Rollie placed the French envelope linings atop our showcase." The company line that modern wrapping paper was a Hallmark innovation meshed seamlessly with folk wisdom that wrapping paper was a Hallmark moneymaking scheme. In 2017, the 100th anniversary of that fateful improvisation brought forth a wave of headlines like "100 years ago, wrapping paper was invented in Kansas City". Those stories were sparked by a Hallmark press release that was a little more ambiguous, carefully claiming the company is "credited with founding the modern-day gift wrap industry", but under a headline that says "Hallmark Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Gift Wrap". If you define "gift wrap" specifically as commercially manufactured paper with a decorative repeating pattern, that is. Say yes to the dressings Remember that little detail at the beginning of Hall's story about the tissue paper in holiday colors, sometimes even graphic holly patterns? The stuff that was so popular it sold out at the Halls' store? Of course gift-givers were indeed wrapping presents in America in 1917 and much earlier. Along with other decorative frippery like stickers and ribbons, tissue paper was part of a larger category referred to as "gift dressings".
See? From a 1912 ad for Brandeis Stores in Omaha, Nebraska I myself don't subscribe to the Great Man of Christmas History theory. I don't see Rollie B. Hall's move as a thunderbolt of unique world-shaping genius. If he hadn't started selling pre-printed decorative paper for wrapping gifts, someone else would've. For all we know, other people did, but their local stationery stores didn't grow into the most famous greeting card brand on Earth. But isn't it true that Hallmark tried to invent or inflate new "holidays" like Friendship Day and Boss's Day? Yeah. And they flopped. Turns out Hallmark does not hold the mystic power to bend the human mind to their will. They built their empire on holidays people already celebrated, authentically and organically. Same with wrapping paper. So go forth and wrap this Christmas, free of any worry that you're being manipulated by Hallmark. It's a tradition as old as paper itself. Now, if you find yourself wrapping gifts for Boss's Day... Do you wrap your Christmas presents? I still do for close family (ie, things that’ll be under the tree) but it’s pretty much gift bags for anything else. If so, are you any good at it? I often start out feeling like I’ve finally got this locked down, but then I get some wonky shaped object and it’s just a mess of scraps of paper and a ton of tape. Let’s hear about your gift prep traditions and skillz in this week’s Shoddy Goods Chat! Give yourself something to talk about with family this Christmas. These Shoddy Goods stories are thought-provoking, yet not fight-provoking:
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