Dear Elf on the Shelf,
I don’t really know what to call you. I’m pretty sure I need to make up some silly name. Let’s go with Princess, since I’m positive that’s what your name would be if I caved in and bought you.
Here’s the thing, Princess: I sort of have a problem with your entire existence. It’s kind of a busy time of year already, you know? There are parties to throw, presents to buy and wrap, houses to clean, glasses of eggnog to drink. My oldest is knee-deep in Kindergarten holiday festivities; my husband travels all the time; and I’m training for a marathon. And now suddenly I’ve got to spend an entire month coming up with precarious situations to put you in?! Oh, look—tee-hee!—Princess is making snow angels in flour. Or over here! It’s Princess pooping out a Hershey kiss. Isn’t this fun? Weren’t my children so excited about this for 15 seconds? Did you know that there are entire Pinterest boards dedicated to creative ways to display you and your buddies? There are even boards that help deal with Elf on the Shelf emergencies. EMERGENCIES. In my mind, the only emergency that could involve a toy elf is one of my kids shoving him up her nose.
But do you clean up after yourself once you’ve—haha!—squeezed toothpaste all over the bathroom sink? Do you have some sort of magical feature that makes me not care that you unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper? Because that would be a toy worth buying. Which is what you are, Princess: a toy. A toy to make my children behave well enough to get more toys.
You may be wondering why I have such strong feelings about a Christmas “tradition.” I’ve narrowed it down to a few reasons. It’s possible that I am already overwhelmed by all there is to do at Christmas. Besides the obvious buying and wrapping of presents and trying to steer my children toward asking for appropriate ones (by the way, Princess, if you could put in a word with the Big Guy not to bring Molly the drum set and puppy she asked for, that’d be great), there’s baking, taking adorable pictures for cards, and sending out said adorable cards.
It’s possible that I am jealous of your creators. All they did was create a creepy-looking doll, write a book, and put the words “A Christmas tradition!” on it, and now they’re swimming the backstroke in their piles of money like Scrooge McDuck. Or maybe I’m just commenting on the commercialism of Christmas and eager for us to return to a simpler time, when the holidays focused on family, friends, and the birth of our Savior.
But most likely it’s the jealousy thing.
So now I’ve got two choices: (1) stick to my convictions and be a Scrooge, risking my kids ruining the Elf on the Shelf fun for their classmates; or (2) cave in and buy you or your buddy and spend the entire month of December cleaning up Elf on the Shelf messes (or, more likely, moving you from the mantle to the coffee table and back again).
And did I mention there’s a Birthday Elf on the Shelf now? Because that’s a thing. So now we’ll all be trying to outdo each other on our kids’ birthdays with more elf shenanigans (tee-hee, my elf hired a sky writer and wrote “happy birthday” in the clouds!).
So where does that leave us? I don’t really know. Am I asking a lot of hypothetical questions of a toy? Probably. Let’s just agree to stay out of each other’s way this Christmas, shall we? And for the love of Hasbro, don’t become a tradition at any other holiday.
Love,
The Mom on the Couch
We did not want to do the Elf because there is so much else going on but my husbands mother just HAD to get him the darn thing and read him the book. My son named him Stinkerpants and he’s not allowed to make a mess. He plays with toys or hides in the tree but we don’t get to creative and when we forget to move it….happens a lot….we just say he had so much fun doing whatever that when he came back that’s where he went. Hey don’t judge the 3 year old is cool with it.
My husband and I were not going to do Elf on the Shelf. Low and behold my mother (wanting everything in the world for my son) bought us a set anyway. She didn’t want him to miss out on the tradition. So we read the book, named the thing, and started it’s travel around the house every night.
We do ours a liiiiiittle different though. He does NOT get into mischief. I thought the elf doing that would only give my all ready rambunctious son ideas that he didn’t need. So instead he tends to play with toys. Usually he’ll pick a toy here and there and take it up high to play with it. (The no touching rule is the hardest to enforce so we just keep him up high.) He never makes messes and he never does things that get him into trouble. Occasionally he’ll get captured by army men or ride a Trex. But for the most part he just moves around the house and gives my son a different game to play every morning. Find Johnny.
So while we didn’t want to and were kinda forced to.. we’ve turned it into something mild and fun rather than mischievous and annoying. It does get tiresome and by the end of the month I’ve run out of creative ideas and he just gets slapped up wherever he hasn’t been yet. We also do not throw him parties. I’ve seen some families who’s elves bring a big spread of tasty donuts and cookies.. presents and so forth but we refrain from that too. He can be Santa’s messenger all he wants but he shows up without much fan fare.
I can understand the lack of desire for the Elf. We’ve just worked him into our lives in our own way because we didn’t have much of a choice. But it has turned out fun for my son.