Okay, it's December 25th. See if you can guess what this post will be about. Your one hint: it has NOTHING TO DO WITH MY PLANNED MISSION TO MARS

There's something so satisfying, I think, about wrapping paper.

I love the way it folds and creases as it bends around box corners.

I love the way a single stroke of the scissors can be dragged in a straight line for the length of the incision across the paper, and the Hallmark-pioneered idea of measuring the inches on the reverse side of the pattern with little gridlines, so that the straightness of those incisions is only limited by the strength of your inebriation or the severity of your cerebral palsey.

I love that a silver bow goes with virtually ever color and style of wrapping paper. Even that plain, butcher-style brown paper that clearly indicates someone's thoughtfulness ran out somewhere between buying your gift and wrapping it looks pretty good to me with a silver bow on it.

I love the way the paper tears in someone's hand - the anticipation of revelation building for both the gift-giver and the gift-givee, and the look on the givee's face when they yank out a 32-ounce cut of top sirloin, wrapped so neatly that the blood has pooled inside the packaging and not dripped underneath the tree at all - and thank goodness too, because the dog would totally have eaten the top round otherwise.

I love that the paper is made of trees, just like Christmas trees are, which prompted my fanciful childhood notion that the Christmas tree and the various wrapped gifts are embroiled in December-long arguments about whose death was more meaningful and whose fate is ultimately worse. And I'm betting the Christmas tree probably gets all high and mighty when he sees the wrapping paper get torn up and discarded into unsightly piles on Christmas morning, but then he feels pretty lonely for the next couple of weeks, and then he realizes just as he's being undressed and tossed to the curbside that the paper was the winner after all. I think there's a lesson in that for all of us, and that the lesson probably has something to do with Jesus.

Merry Christmas, to everyone who is inclined to accept hearing that. To everyone else, happy Tuesday.