I try not to hate anyone. As the wise Maya Angelou has said about hate, “…it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” I feel that’s true in many facets of life, and while hatred burns from the inside and roils up unhelpfully at the worst possible moments, I still can’t help but actively hate that creepy AF Elf on the Shelf.
Even if you don’t have kids, I will assume you’ve heard of this plucky little bugger. But, if you have been fortunate enough to miss out on the multitude of ridiculous social media posts about a toy elf getting into all kinds of mischief, I’ll fill you in — briefly. Researching this article meant that I had to traverse areas of the internet that I didn’t want my Google knowing about, and believe me: I didn’t linger.
The Elf on a Shelf was created to bring magic to kids at Christmastime, although I figured the idea of Santa was magical enough. It was when I was a kid, anyway. He sits on the shelf and spies on your kids all day (you read that correctly — he spies on them) and at night, zooms off to Santa to report back all the juicy deets about your kids’ behaviour. This is how Santa makes his naughty or nice list, according to the handy-dandy video I watched on the subject.
Every morning he pops back to your house and sets up his operation in a new place, and the process repeats. Apparently, kids love searching for the elf every day, but this is where the cuteness ends if it ever began, and honestly: things have since gotten a bit weird.
The idea behind the elf was innocent enough, I believe. Maybe each new day he’s getting creative with his hideyholes — perhaps he’s peeking out from behind a conveniently placed houseplant or keeping watch from above the television. The company has encouraged some level of creativity for parents, for sure, and that can definitely help create some magic for your kids during the holidays.
But parents have taken this whole Elf thing to a new, freaky level and I, for one, refuse to partake.
#1 — it’s a trick
Kids aren’t dumb. We think they are, but that’s just further proof of our own, uh…dumbness.
Teaching your kids to behave isn’t something that can be conned, according to child psychologist Dr. Vanessa Lapointe. Bringing in an outside source of control and discipline in the form of an inanimate object just shows kids that their parents aren’t in power at all, and that can lead to more misbehaviour, rather than less. Lapointe says that “a capable, competent, in-charge adult wouldn’t need to rely on tricks and strategies to control the child.” — source
If your goal, at least, in part, is to encourage good behaviour with this little fella, that likely won’t be the outcome. In fact, it could get worse.
Let’s just say that your kid takes this whole elf-Santa agreement thing super seriously. For the entire month of December, they’re good as gold, the stuff of angels. The reward is presents. Right?
Do they get denied presents if they’re not perfect angels? Do they know that they will still get presents even if they misbehave?
I know what you’re thinking, and I get it. What about Santa? We’ve been telling our kids about Santa for literally centuries, about how he knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake and all that stuff. I hear you.
Isn’t Santa enough, though? And beyond the potential for good behaviour, isn’t the magic of Santa enough?
It is in my house. And considering you’re going to crush your child one day with the truth about the big ol’ guy, anyway, are you going to add to that disappointment by also taking away the magic of that beloved elf?
We’re already tricking our kids to some degree with this Santa stuff — so much so that in my house, I try not to make a huge deal out of it and I purposely keep Santa and everything about him just a little bit vague. Adding a magical elf who toilet papers Dad’s office or takes a bath in the dog’s water dish is just going to add to the confusion, as much as it adds to the potential holiday magic.
#2 — it’s a show of privilege
No, I’m not referring to the kind of privilege we see all over the media in our current culture, although that does come into play to some degree, here.
What I mean, specifically, is that not every child has an elf, and when another kid comes to school and talks about how their elf was found in the rec room that morning, playing on the VR gear while trying to use the hoverboard, that can make a kid without an elf (or VR gear, etc) feel their relative poverty.
Whether they actually live in poverty is not the point — to a kid, not having what the other kids have feels like a kind of poverty to them. It’s ridiculous, but if you have a kid, you know how they react when some snooty kid boasts about their stuff. Hell, even adults do this and it’s always a major feel-bad.
Lots of kids get a single present on Christmas morning, while others get mountains of gifts. I try to teach my child, who is, by no means, excessively privileged, not to boast. She gets a reasonable amount of presents each year, while other kids get less, and others get more. It’s a delicate subject, trying to explain that she was just as good as her friend who got a boatload of presents, comparatively, and considering the popularity of that damned elf, it’s always something we are questioned about.
In short, that elf is not a universal Christmas tradition and it needs to stop being boasted about.
#3 — it’s a social media craze
Let’s be honest; for a lot of people, that elf is all about the likes.
Social media influencers have taken the Elf on the Shelf to a weird and wacky place. I’ve seen posts depicting elves in elaborate poses doing extremely mischievous and even downright awful things, such as “playfully” grating a marshmallow snowman on a cheese grater to create bite-sized morsels. I’ve seen elves “pooping” on cookies, “peeing” in water and labelling it “lemonade,” and even drinking wine from mommy’s “stash.”
That elf needs some serious therapy.
Beyond all that, there are YouTube videos starring popular kidfluencers — see my thoughts on that particular catastrophe here — chasing around the most elaborate elves ever, which leaves us regular parents (and elves) looking lazy and lame, comparatively. The question from your kids will no longer be “why don’t we have an elf on the shelf” but rather, “why does our elf just sit and watch us while that kid’s elf is making madeleines with Martha Stewart?”
I genuinely don’t know how to answer that effectively, which is likely why I don’t have an elf at all. I have always tried to shy away from social media trends — I don’t own a Tik Tok account and I’ve never felt compelled to ingest laundry detergent — and this elf thing is just another trend that I hope will fade into nothing over time.
Like planking. Remember planking? Probably not, thank the maker.
I could write a book about all the reasons I hate that elf — he’s creepy, naughty, a pain in the ass, and so much more. I think the most important thing to note, however, is that with all the other items on your to-do list over the holidays, do you really need to include a creative way to position that elf every morning to keep your kids entertained? I don’t know about you, but I already wake up at 3 a.m. thinking about something I forgot to do the night before — I don’t need to add an elf to that equation.
Just say no.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com