Why bubble wrap makes Christmas perfect

Dec 01, 2025 11:50AM ● By Gary Chalk

It doesn’t take much to amuse me. This is why my wife Jan always knows what to buy me for Christmas. She goes to Staples and gets a honking big roll of bubble wrap.

Yes, bubble wrap.

On Christmas night, after all the excitement, it’s time to relax. Jan props herself up in bed and dives into a book she received. Me? I stretch out beside her and start popping my bubble wrap.

“Gary, I’m trying to read Louise Penny’s latest novel. Do you have to pop that stuff while I’m reading?”

“But dear, this is how you use bubble wrap. Popping bubble wrap isn’t passive. It’s an active sensory experience.”

“Well, Gary, please come to your senses and play with another one of your presents.”

“Jan, don’t be silly. You gave me Beard & Moustache Color For Men.”

My love of bubble wrap goes back to when Jan and I got married. Wrapping Christmas presents was a two-step procedure. We’d sit at our kitchen table with wrapping paper, scissors, rolls of Scotch tape and small gift tags.

Jan did, well, most everything. She carefully wrapped each present, folding the corners like Martha Stewart, then signed the gift tag because, “Gary, your writing looks like random Egyptian scribbling.”

My job was to pack bubble wrap inside the gift box. Not to brag, but I became the prince of popping bubble wrap.

While bubble wrap is my favorite gift to receive, if I had my druthers, my gift of choice to give friends would be—get ready for it—foam chips. Instead of receiving something that wears out, falls apart or gets used once, foam chips are the gift that keeps on giving.

Here’s what I mean.

If I do it right, I can stuff a bazillion, no, make that a gazillion of those itty-bitty white foam chips inside a gift box. Then, on Christmas morning, when my friends unwrap my present and lift the lid there is AN EXPLOSION—like a Scud missile. BOOM!

It’s raining foam chips in their family room. Foam chips stuck everywhere: on the sofa, in the carpet, even on the dog. Sitting in their bathrobe, my friends look like they’ve been tarred and feathered.

Now the real fun begins.

Removing foam chips is tedious. It’s like trying to find the start of a roll of Saran Wrap, only worse. You have to carefully pick them off one by one, and even that doesn’t work. The rest of Christmas Day is spent plucking foam chips off your bathrobe, out of your hair, from your slippers, even out of your nostrils. And the more you touch them, the more energized they become. Such fun.

I once said to a friend—okay, a former friend—that when scientists discovered static electricity, they must have immediately invented foam chips. Otherwise, how would we even know static electricity was a thing?

Speaking of inventions, has anyone thought of manufacturing foam chips with added Gorilla Glue to really, really upset people?

Oh wait. They already have.

Foam chips give a whole new meaning to “it is better to give than receive.”

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