This is the age of well-packaged products. At festivals, weddings, birthdays and more occasions than we ever knew existed, you see these perfectly wrapped gifts, baskets of flowers or bowls of fruit and sweets. They shimmer at you, so complete in themselves that you are loathe to open them. You don’t want to tear off the delicate wrapping paper, toss away the swirls and curls of ribbon or the spangles and stars that shimmer at you coquettishly. It seems criminal to allow the wrapping paper to be tossed away, the ribbon to be confined to the trash can, the cards thrown away after one cursory glance ...

In the old days, gaily wrapped gifts were received by hosts who were celebrating occasions important to them. We thought that quite normal, regular, the done thing and we made certain that we carried our little or large offerings — depending on our financial circumstances at the time — all neatly wrapped and labelled so the recipient would know who had given what ...

But slowly, over the years, with the spread of glamour and glitz and innovative thinking, not only have the gifts changed but so have the wrappings. So, a wedding invitation unfolds into a multilayered extravaganza of design and lettering and is accompanied by a box of sweets that looks like a treasure chest, or a cellophane-wrapped hamper that contains more than a treasure chest would or a length of material enveloped in professionally done glitter that could cost as much as the gift itself!

And that is just the beginning ... In due course, you attend the wedding, marvel at the grandeur and on your way out, you suddenly find yourself being handed a fancily wrapped gift, bows and card all perfectly colour-coordinated!

Just when you reconcile yourself to the thought that going overboard is excusable at a wedding, you attend a memorial after the passing of a loved one and suddenly, there too, you are presented with this offering in red and gold or blue and beige and you go home to unveil a photo frame or a sauce bowl that is uniquely commemorative of the life that has passed.

Will the gifting and the wrapping never end, you wonder. Who thinks up all this and who wraps it?

Many of you will recall how, when we were young, we were never allowed to tear open gift-wrapped items. We used a pair of scissors, a sharp knife or a letter opener; we unstuck tape carefully so as not to leave a mark; and then we patted down and folded all that decorative paper and stashed it away safely for re-use at some other time. When packing became more elaborate, we spent more time over the unpacking, heightening our anticipation of what lay concealed, sometimes giving ourselves more thrills than the gift finally did. Eventually, we found that we had packets full of curly and twirly ribbons in all shades and hues, we had readymade bows and paper flowers, we had beautiful crystal encrusted presentation boxes ... we had every possible contrivance that could make us keep up with the times without calling in a professional to do the gift wrapping for us.

But, whatever we did, we came up sadly lacking, largely because we rarely devoted enough time to packaging and presentation and how things looked. Thus, the untidy tumble of sweets in a hastily thrown together box of homemade goodies stayed open to view under hastily chosen transparent paper; or all the lovely ribbons we had stuck on in strategic places as camouflage came undone and hung in tufts from our elbows ...

Given that the countdown to Christmas has begun, do we have time to redeem ourselves and improve presentation skills with the packages that go under the Christmas tree?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.