Christmas Wrapping
Christmas song by the American post-punk band the Waitresses
"Christmas Wrapping" is a Christmas song by the American new wave band the Waitresses. First released on ZE Records' 1981 compilation album A Christmas Record, it later appeared on the band's 1982 EP I Could Rule the World If I Could Only Get the Parts and numerous other holiday compilation albums. It was written and produced by Chris Butler, with vocals by Patty Donahue.
"Christmas Wrapping" received positive reviews and AllMusic described it as "one of the best holiday pop tunes ever recorded". It has been covered by more than a dozen acts, including the Spice Girls.
Writing
In 1981, ZE Records asked each of its artists to record a Christmas song for a compilation album, A Christmas Record. The Waitresses were in the middle of a difficult tour and the Christmas song commission was "the last thing we wanted", Butler said later.
Butler wrote the song that August, assembling it from assorted unused riffs. He finished the lyrics in a taxi on the way to the recording studio, Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village. Butler said the lyrics came from his hatred of Christmas: "Everybody I knew in New York was running around like a bunch of fiends.
The public source identifies “Christmas Wrapping” as christmas song by the American post-punk band the Waitresses. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Christmas, Wrapping and song.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q966710. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christmas Wrapping” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.