"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. The song received positive reviews; AllMusic described it as "one of the best holiday pop tunes ever recorded". 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. It wasn't about joy. It was something to cope with." The bassist, Tracy Wormworth, was inspired by Bernard Edwards' bassline on the recently released "Good Times" by Chic. Written while hip hop music was beginning to gain prominence, "Christmas Wrapping" is "almost rapped" by Donahue. Its title, a pun on "rapping", alludes to the 1979 song "Christmas Rappin'" by Kurtis Blow. Butler said he also "liked the idea of the word 'wrap,' like a wraparound, because the story is circular". Lyrics "Christmas Wrapping" is told from the perspective of a single woman determined not to participate in the exhausting holiday season after a year so busy she has been unable to go on a date with a man she met months ago. Preparing to dine alone on Christmas Eve, she runs into the man in a grocery store, bringing "the year to a very happy ending". Release "Christmas Wrapping" was released as a single in the UK in 1981 on Island Records. It did not initially make the charts, but was reissued in 1982 and reached No. 45 on the UK Singles Chart that December. It remains the Waitresses' highest-charting single in the UK. Butler said the reception was a rejuvenating gift for the band: "We do the Christmas song, forget about it and go back