Evading the elf

Mass-marketed ‘tradition’ mercifully missed

Of all the cultural phenomena I’ve missed and/or avoided in my life (looking right at you, parachute pants, mullets and the Macarena), there is one most appropriate to the season and highest on my list, right up there at the tippy-top, complete with a star.

I have not had to participate in or execute the Elf on the Shelf. (And by execute, I mean carrying out the details of it, not … well, you know, but some parents might be in favor of the more lethal definition.)

Apparently Christmas wishes do sometimes come true.

Seems the Elf on the Shelf is a current fad based on a children’s book, the plot of which is that Santa has an army of elves. One is assigned to every house to watch over the children, then to fly back each night as said children sleep to report to the Big Guy. Then, the elf returns return to a different place in the home by the time the kids stir the next morning.

That relocation is accomplished either by magic or a groggy parent stumbling around pre-crack of dawn trying to find a new place to put the elf. Oh, the holiday merriment.

I do not speak from experience because, as I gloated earlier, the Elf on the Shelf was never a thing around our holiday chalet. I’m going to pause here to allow some of you a moment of either awe or envy, depending on your emotional health and how far you’ve had to go to cram one more “tradition” into your holiday season and one more elf into a hiding place.

I also want to clarify. Before I get all up on my cultural high horse (high reindeer?) about not hiding the Elf on the Shelf, constantly answering questions about the elf, injuring myself rushing to move the elf before he’s spotted in same location as the previous night and generally worrying way too much about a doll with pointed ears, I want to say this missing of the EOTS boat is, well basically, pure outhouse luck. With a big holiday wreath on the door. Another Christmas miracle. Frankly, the only reason I’m not waist-deep in Elf on the Shelfery is that the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I took the off-ramp on having to greatly exaggerate Santa Claus’ participation in Christmas about 16 years ago. For some reason, age 9 seems to be the point at which the reality set in for most of our children.

Also, none of them adopted the game theory my wife did when she was a child, mainly that she’d been believing and presents kept showing up, so why rock the boat?

So we missed another fun-filled family tradition turned into a marketing machine and had to make do with all the other fun-filled family traditions that had already been turned into marketing machines. Though I have to say the “elf watches you all day, then flies back to Santa to report” thing plays nicely into Christmas’ semi-surveillance state vibe.

Come on, do the lyrics “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake” ever creep you out just a little? Add the idea of an elf watching you 24/7 and no wonder our kids are a little paranoid right now.

Could be worse. For 364 days a year we teach our kids not to accept candy from strangers and then on Halloween we dress them up and send them out door to door to collect as much as trash bag will hold. Either that, or we allow them to engage in petty extortion. “Nice tree you’ve got in the yard there. Be a shame if it got wrapped in toilet paper. Now, got any Snickers?”

Look, for those of you scrambling every morning to hide the elf and throughout the season to extend the magic and innocence just a little bit longer (though you do have to wonder sometimes who that’s for), I feel your pain. The going price for a baby tooth in our household ranged from 50 cents to $10, depending on what the Tooth Fairy had in his pocket and could pretend to find on the floor the morning after not making the tooth-for-cash swap because he fell asleep the night before.

And if keeping the Joy and Magic Express running somewhat single-handedly proves too much, the appropriate mix for a helpful holiday drink is five parts eggnog to one part bourbon.

But the Tooth Fairy told me I could flip that ratio.