To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.

White’s line suggests that the older one gets, the harder it is to experience Christmas directly—its warmth, generosity, and spiritual or familial meaning—because those qualities are increasingly obscured by “wrapping”: the commercial packaging, social expectations, and ritualized busyness surrounding the holiday. The metaphor implies that Christmas has become an object layered in presentation and performance, so that perception is mediated by surfaces rather than essence. It also hints at a personal, age-related change: childhood wonder gives way to adult awareness of cost, labor, and artifice. The sentence is wry rather than bitter, capturing White’s characteristic skepticism about modern clutter and his longing for plainness and sincerity.