In 1981, ZE Records asked each of its artists to record a Christmas song for a Christmas compilation album, A Christmas Record. Songwriter Chris Butler wrote the song in August that year, assembling it from assorted unused riffs. He finished the lyrics in a taxi cab on the way to the recording studio. The lyrics came from Butler's hatred of Christmas: "Everybody I knew in New York was running around like a bunch of fiends. It wasn't about joy. It was something to cope with." Written while hip hop music was beginning to gain prominence, the song is "almost rapped" by vocalist Patty Donahue. Its title is a pun on "rapping", and was a spoof on the name of the 1979 song "Christmas Rappin'" by Kurtis Blow. Beyond that, the title is a play on the lyrics themselves: Butler explained in an interview that he "liked the idea of the word 'wrap,' like a wraparound, because the story is circular".
Lyrics
The song is told from the perspective of a busy single woman adamant not to participate in the exhausting Christmas period. She has "turned down all invites" and resolves to "miss this one this year". Earlier in the year, she met an appealing man at a ski shop and got his number, but had no time to ask him out. Despite their attempts to meet in the following months, a succession of mishaps keeps them apart. On Christmas Eve, the woman is roasting "the world's smallest turkey" for herself when she realizes she has forgotten to buy cranberries. At a 24-hour grocery store, she runs into the man, who has also forgotten to buy cranberries, bringing her Christmas "to a very happy ending". In the final refrain, she admits that she "couldn't miss this one this year".
Release and reception
The song was an immediate and unexpected success. According to Butler, the Waitresses were in the middle of a difficult tour and the Christmas song commission was "the last thing we wanted". He recalled later that its enthusiastic reception was a rejuvenating gift for the band: "We do the Christmas song, forget about it and go back on the road. The next thing I know when calling back to New York is that it's all over the radio and much to our surprise it leaps over our heads and hits all the cities where we're heading and all of a suddenwe're back on an upswing again." The song was released as a single in the UK in 1981 on Island Records. Although it did not make the charts that year, it was reissued in 1982 and reached No. 45 on the official UK Singles Chart in December 1982. Writing in 2005, Guardian arts journalist Dorian Lynskey called the song "fizzing, funky dance-around-the-Christmas-tree music for Brooklyn hipsters." In 2012, Daily Telegraph writer Bernadette McNulty called it "one of the most charming, insouciant festive songs ever." AllMusic reviewer Andy Hinds called it "one of the best holiday pop tunes ever recorded."
Commercial performance
On the UK Official Singles chart, "Christmas Wrapping" peaked at number 45, spending two weeks there. It remains the group's highest-charting single there. During the 2016 holiday season, the song experienced a resurgence in popularity in the UK, re-entering the singles chart at number 96. The song has since been featured on numerous holiday music compilations including The Edge of Christmas, Dr. Demento's Holidays in Dementia, and .
