I’m giving a gift, I give a Christmas gift because that’s the holiday I celebrate. I send Christmas cards. I sing Christmas carols. I do not get Hanukkah cards for my Jewish friends, "
But you’re giving a gift to another person, not yourself. I don’t think too many Catholics show up at bar mitzvahs with “congratulations on your confirmation” cards just because that’s what they themselves celebrate.
“.my point was that yes…I wouldnt purposely choose a manger scene over a non manger scene, but I would put it in a manger scene if that’s all I had. The paper chosen is not to offend or being “naive and ignorant”…it’s what is available, because it’s not meant to make a specific point. The same with wrapping a mans gift in a more masculine christmas paper. None available paper? Well they get the snowflake, too. I’m not insinuating anything.”
So why don’t you wrap the gift for a baby shower held in June in your manger scene paper, if it’s all just paper? You should be indifferent between that and the pastel paper with little duckies and ABCs.
Come to think of it, why aren’t you wrapping Christmas gifts in little duckies and ABCs?! It’s “not meant to make a specific point.”
I’m being sarcastic of course but I’m also trying to make a point here.
“Have kids with birthdays on either side of Christmas (one’s is tomorrow) and I’m pretty sure they have never received gifts wrapped in anything other than Christmas wrap.”
As a December 23 birthday, i don’t think of a December 15 bday as being “close to Christmas” at all, and completely don’t get why you’d use Christmas paper for it when presumably you wouldn’t use it if the kid’s bday was Oct 15. I get other people doing it out of laziness, but you’re the mother!
I’m just happy to get a present. Most of my wrapped gifts seem to have snowmen and reindeer on them.
Look…the OP wants to know if she should take offense or read anything more into it. The vast majority have told her no and the reasons why, I’m not going to argue with you anymore about this as you nit pick my response.
It’s thoughtless, but it’s also not worth taking deliberate offense at it IMO.
Since they’re not in an interfaith marriage themselves, it has probably never occurred to them that anyone might take offense to what they’re doing. They’re simply giving holiday gifts to everyone in the family, and you’re part of the family.
I suspect Marian is right. They just didn’t stop to think. Lots of people are like that.
I can just hear the argument between the couple giving the gift. The wife is fretting about having run out of the appropriate paper, and the husband is saying, “Are you kidding me? They are NOt scrutinizing your fricking wrapping paper for hidden messages; they are just happy you are giving them a gift.” Well, this thread is evidence in favor of the wife; some people are scrutinizing the wrapping paper for hidden messages! Good to know!
I don’t think the vast majority of people give two hoots about the wrapping paper.
But I’m tacky. I’ve wrapped things in newspaper before because I ran out of wrapping paper. Strangely, the people I’ve given those gifts to are still my friends. shrug
^^
When I was a kid, getting something wrapped in the sunday comics was the holy grail of wrapping paper.
“They are NOt scrutinizing your fricking wrapping paper for hidden messages; they are just happy you are giving them a gift.” Well, this thread is evidence in favor of the wife; some people are scrutinizing the wrapping paper for hidden messages! Good to know!"
It’s not that it’s hidden messages; it’s just that … well, you really don’t think it would be weird to show up for Mother’s Day in May bearing gifts wrapped in dreidel paper, and at the baby shower in June bearing gifts wrapped in Santa and reindeer, and Father’s Day bearing gifts wrapped in pastel paper with little duckies and alphabet blocks?
The whole reason some of you are buying Christmas paper in the first place is precisely because you are trying to send a message - that you’re “coordinating” it to the holiday in some way. Otherwise you’d use the leftover baby shower paper or “Happy Mother’s Day” paper for your Christmas gifts.
These are firstiest of first world problems, to be sure. 9 times out of 10, the description from the OP - her boyfriend’s parents send her presents presumably wrapped in overtly Christmas paper and she’s Jewish) - is a function of what Marian describes - people who just aren’t thinking. No need to impute maliciousness unless there’s more to the story. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a thoughtless thing to do. Not awful, just mean – just without a lot of thought especially because the “solution” of neutral wrapping paper isn’t like some great big secret or new invention or anything. It has always seemed like simple common sense to me.
Yes, this would be completely weird and wrong, but I think you are making an argument in the extreme here. If I were invited to a friends house while they are celebrating Hanukkah, I would not show up with a Christmas present - that would be horrid. In any other context this time of year, I celebrate Christmas, and as such I give out Christmas gifts to friends and family as a means of sharing the holiday. On the flip side, I have received gifts from traditions different, and in conflict with my own, and felt a little honored that someone would be willing to include me in a world where I don’t fit in or belong.
“If I were invited to a friends house while they are celebrating Hanukkah, I would not show up with a Christmas present - that would be horrid.”
That’s precisely how the OP felt, though - she celebrates Hanukah and someone gave her a Christmas gift. Whether she’s right, wrong or overreacting, that’s where she was coming from.
I think we are talking past each other but saying the same thing -
Injecting my holiday into yours = wrong
Including you in my holiday = OK
Pizzagirl, my Jewish friends were invited to my house for several year on Christmas eve and if it was also Hanukkah, showed up with their gifts, candles, food. They wouldn’t have liked it if I showed up at their house with a tree and lights and a creche, but they did what they wanted to do. Did I turn down their gifts to me, or even expect them to be ‘Christmasy’? No. I would not expect someone who doesn’t celebrate a holiday to create a separate set of gifts, cards, wrapping paper for me. The OP was not talking about being invited to a bar mitzvah, but receiving a gift in the mail sent purely out of the tradition of the sender. The sender wants to share a Christmas tradition of their own with OP.
What should the giver do if the receiver celebrates nothing religious or cultural in a late December? Would all the wrapping need to be orange as to not offend the receiver? Give no gift at all? In the OP’s situation, the relative should send a gift to the believer but not to the non-celebrating spouse because the spouse doesn’t want a Christmas gift, doesn’t want a Hanukkah gift, does not want a festivus gift?
My kids would get christmas wrap even if their birthdays were not near christmas. That’s the wrap we have at our house. We like Christmas, snowmen, reindeer. As I said, most if not all of the birthday gifts we gave over the years to school friends were wrapped in christmas paper, even in May or October. Not unheard of for Mothers day either.
There are people who spend a lot of time making each wrapping job a Martha Stewart creation. It’s up to the giver to decide what the wrapping should be.
My birthday happens to be Festivus so I’m in favor of everyone receiving Festivus gifts 
You do you, but I do kind of think it’s a little strange to give gifts throughout the year for events that have nothing to do with Christmas in overtly-Christmas wrap.
"What should the giver do if the receiver celebrates nothing religious or cultural in a late December? Would all the wrapping need to be orange as to not offend the receiver? "
Dude, this is why every Walgreen’s and CVS on the planet has wrapping paper that works for all occasions! This just isn’t that hard. It seems like there are 2 different strategies:
I just don’t get the strategy of - I’ll buy Christmas paper and use it for everything all throughout the year. But again, you do you. In real life, I’d probably think - oh, a little odd, for about 3 seconds, then I’d move on with my life!!
I am the non-Jewish partner in an interfaith family. I am very happy with how my husband and I and our families have evolved around these issues. I was always willing to raise our kids Jewish and both families have been very open and loving. So in many ways our path has been easy.
But I will tell you that what really helped my husband and I is that we took a course offered by the Jewish community for interfaith couples before our marriage and again when we had children. We were always on the same page but it really helped facilitate our communication around the issues. I would urge any interfaith couple to look for such a course in their community.
I suspect that if the wrapping paper is bothering you, it really isn’t about the wrapping paper. If you and your SO haven’t had conversations about how you see yourselves practicing your faiths, celebrating holidays, raising children together, I urge you to have those conversations before you make a further commitment to the relationship.
I think that this is the real issue here. For this reason, you find their choices suspicious. I think you’re going to have to decide if you are just going to ignore it, or if you are going to tell them point blank the next time it comes up that you aren’t going to convert.
I think the wrapping paper is pretty much a non-issue. If his family is Jewish, they are giving you a Chanukah present. If his family is Christian, they are giving you a Christmas present. In either case, giving a present is a thought ful thing to do.
Personally, I mostly use neutral festive paper anyway. I have a Jewish friend who sometimes spends Christmas with us, and when she does, I give her a present. It’s a Christmas present, not a Chanukah present. She isn’t spending Chanukah with us. My celebration of Christmas is cultural, rather than religious, and she is aware of that. Call it Yule. 
Anyway, I have no recollection at all of what wrapping paper either of us has used on those occasions! 