Our Elf on the Shelf only arrived in time for my youngest child. The older ones were past the watch-keeping stage when the good old elf made his debut. I found a Christmas photo from a couple of years ago in which our elf was smugly propped up behind our five-gallon fish tank. In our family, the routine was that I place him in strange places, not exactly in compromising positions as much as unexpected places, because my son just did not fall for the whole “elf is watching out” thing at all.
Ever since we got the elf years ago as the result of a public relations gift, it remained little more than a decorative plush. If anything, we found him … unsettling. It was mostly his expression, I think. That peculiar painted smile and unnerving eyes reminded me more of Halloween than Christmas.
My son never believed in the elf, and only told me how creepy he looked and to stop moving it around. So, of course, I purposely put it in odd places that might creep him out, and when he found it, he laughed and laughed.
The elf was found upside-down and tightly stuffed through the handle of our kitchen cabinet, popping his eerie head out from behind my son’s school picture that hangs in the dining room, and in the porch, just waiting for one of us to let the dogs out in the yard and get a good fright.
Admittedly, it isn’t the way you’re supposed to utilize the good-old elf, but that’s how we had fun with it. The original idea of the elf’s purpose from the accompanying storybook is cute enough: the elf watches over the kids and reports their activity back to Santa, as long as the kids never touch him.
Although after writing that, to me, he sounds more like a whiny tattler with a built-in protection plan (hence the hands-off policy).
Yet, there are hoards of parents who love the elf and tons of kids who can’t wait to wake up and look for him. And that’s great. It just didn’t work out for us that way.
Perhaps the fact that we didn’t name him (which, according to the book, is how the elf gets his magic so he can fly back and forth from the North Pole to report on the goodness — or I suppose, “badness” — of the kids he’s watching) is the reason why he held no special place for us. More likely, though, I think it’s just that I was skeptical from the get-go, and my kids picked that up. C’mon, a scary-looking, cotton-filled elf holding the power over what lies beneath the tree on Christmas morning? Sounds pretty outlandish to me.
I mean, if I ever get the chance, I’ll ask Santa what he thinks of that one. After all, we all know it’s the big, bearded, white-haired guy who really counts! Oh yeah, and Rudolph, too.
Danielle Sullivan, a mom of three, has worked as a writer and editor in the parenting world for more than 10 years. Sullivan also writes about pets and parenting for Disney’s Babbl
