Elf on the Shelf: A Holiday Menace in Felt

Elf on the Shelf

There are many Christmas traditions I understand. Decorating a tree? Lovely. Baking cookies? Delicious. Buying gifts for people you like? Cheerful. Buying gifts for people you barely like? Well, that’s capitalism.

But there is one holiday ritual I simply cannot wrap my book-loving, coffee-fueled brain around: Elf on the Shelf.

For the blissfully unindoctrinated, Elf on the Shelf is a small, felt-covered doll that parents hide in different spots around the house during December. Every morning, children wake up and race around the house screeching, “Where’s the elf? Where’s the elf?” And the elf, who has all the personality of a damp sponge, is posed in a new, whimsical, Pinterest-approved situation.

He’s eating marshmallows. He’s fishing for goldfish crackers. He’s hanging from the ceiling fan like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.

And this, allegedly, is Christmas magic.

I have questions.

The first being: What does this have to do with Christmas?

I’ve read the Christmas canon: A Christmas Carol, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Polar Express, and that horrifying poem about sugar plums dancing (which, by the way, is a wild hallucination no one has ever adequately explained). Nowhere—NOWHERE—does it mention a surveillance elf reporting your behavior to the North Pole like some red-suited narc.

Because that’s the lore. The elf isn’t just decorative. No, no. He’s a spy. He observes your every move and files nightly reports to Santa. He’s basically the NSA of Christmas.

And somehow everyone is okay with this.

Personally, if I woke up and found a small, wide-eyed felt man staring at me from atop the bookshelf, I would assume I was experiencing a haunting or had made a poor medication decision. But children? Children accept this as wholesome holiday joy.

Every December, social media becomes a shrine to this elf. My entire feed turns into a scrapbook of hyper-staged elf scenes created by exhausted parents who must, at 11:59 p.m., remember: Oh crap, we forgot to move the elf again.

Cue the panic.

Cue the running around in pajama pants, shoving the elf behind a plant, or sticking him in the sugar canister because creativity died around the same time the pumpkin spice latte did.

And then there are the overachievers.

Some parents make the elf bake cookies. Some make him toilet-paper the Christmas tree.One elf I saw online had apparently spent the night building a miniature marshmallow snowman complete with a licorice scarf and pretzel arms.

I’m sorry, but if I’m spending that kind of effort on anything after 9 p.m., it better be a novel or a crime scene cover-up, not the recreational positioning of a tiny felt informant.

Meanwhile, actual Santa—who should be the star of the season—is over here losing relevance because parents have outsourced his moral authority to a motionless doll with rosy cheeks and a sociopathic grin.

And let’s talk about the look of this elf. He has that permanently fixed smile that says, “I know what you did, and I will tell EVERYONE.” His stare is unblinking. His posture is unsettling. He has no joints or feet! If he were human-sized, he would absolutely be the neighbor in a thriller who seems nice but definitely has bodies in the crawl space.

The entire vibe is holiday cheer meets low-budget horror film.

Let’s be honest: Elf on the Shelf isn’t for the kids. The kids would be just as happy with cookies, cartoons, and a present shaped like a rectangle (rectangles always contain the good stuff). The elf is for the parents.

Not because they enjoy it, but because all their friends on Facebook are doing it, and if they don’t, their child will grow up thinking their family lacked holiday spirit and will write an emotionally scathing memoir about it.

Which brings us to the real truth: Elf on the Shelf is weaponized peer pressure wrapped in felt.

And yet, despite my disdain, I do love one thing: the inevitable elf fails. Every year, someone’s dog eats the elf. Someone’s toddler flushes the elf. Someone accidentally melts the elf by placing him too close to a candle.

And then these same parents must come up with on-the-fly explanations like:

• “He’s sick. Santa is letting him rest until he regrows his leg.”

• “He’s in witness protection now.”

• “The dog didn’t eat him; he… relocated.”

  
  

Honestly, that’s the best part of the whole tradition – watching adults try to maintain the continuity of an elf-based universe they never asked to be part of.

In the end, I suppose Elf on the Shelf is just another chapter in the long history of bizarre holiday traditions humans have culturally agreed to. Maybe in a thousand years, archaeologists will unearth these elves and conclude we worshipped them. They won’t be entirely wrong.

As for me, I prefer my Christmas traditions to be simpler: hot cocoa, twinkle lights, a good book, and absolutely no small felt creatures monitoring my behavior.

I already have Siri for that.

See you in the margins,

  --Bookstore Geek