By its very perfection, the envelope, often repeated – you can be unwrapping a package forever – postpones the discovery of the object it contains. The object itself is often insignificant, for it is precisely a specialty of the Japanese package that the triviality of the thing is disproportionate to the luxury of the envelope. […] It is as if, then, the box were the object of the gift, not what it contains.

Roland Barthes (Empire of Signs)