The Elf On The Shelf Is The Devil’s Plaything

My beef with The Elf on the Shelf

This thought may be unpopular, but I’m gonna challenge that sacred cow, the third rail of holiday festivities: The Elf on the Shelf. To be clear: I HATE The Elf on the Shelf.

Never heard of it? It’s basically an overpriced doll with a whimsical backstory. According to legend, this elf lives in people’s homes, flying back to Santa with daily naughty/nice reports. The Elf’s popularity has grown over the years. I blame social media.

Full disclosure: We do not own an Elf on the Shelf, and never have. It became big just as my kids were getting out of the Santa stage, so you might think my grudge is mere jealousy. Much like coveting the newer, better, cooler, baby accessories, long after your kids grow up. You’d be wrong. I will never envy the Elf purchasing populace.

To me, the character has  sinister connotations. He’s really a “naughty/nice informant” to Santa, operating much like a secret police officer in some far-off totalitarian land. Parents perch this little monster about their house and forbid their kids to touch it lest it “loses its magic”. Sometimes parents make “Elf messes” in the night while their kids sleep (i.e., throwing flour all over their kitchen). As if an Elf leaving destruction in its wake is proof of its own existence.

After wreaking havoc, the Elf sprints back to Santa and reports on the children, whose gifts hang in the balance. Ugh. The consumerism of it all. I mean, what ever happened to “be good for goodness sake”? Must we teach our small children that goodness always must equal a tangible personal reward?

Furthermore, it’s a complete abdication of parental responsibility—can you not discipline your young child yourself during the holidays without resorting to Santa’s tattling henchman? At the very least, you think you’d bask in that disciplining respite, reveling in your kid’s awesome behavior since the Elf was on the scene. Wrong! Because the time you save teaching your kids proper manners, you exchange with moving a stupid elf around your house. Congratulations! You have just made your life harder at an already busy time of year.

I must stop my rant and say this disclaimer: if The Elf on the Shelf fills your heart with the effervescent magic of the holidays, well, have at it, my friend! Far be it from me to knock something that brings your family joy. But let’s be honest, if you didn’t have some mixed feelings about the elf (maybe your own subconscious hostilities?), why then are you still scrolling down and reading this post?

Photo: Pixabay

I know my irrational hatred of an overpriced inanimate object is, in fact, ridiculous. You may think, Hey Kristen, get a life! And you may well be right. In the grand scheme of things, our world has massive challenges to face, and my “Elf Issue” definitely falls under the category of #firstworldproblems.

But I have taken enough psychology classes to recognize my own transference. I realize I use that elf as proxy for my holiday angst. The Christmas season wears on me most years–and I know I’m not alone.

Jack’s high needs challenge me on a good day. When you add “Pinterest perfect” holiday traditions running through my news feed…well, it’s enough to push me over the edge. A little negative voice inside my head asks, Am I just taking the easy way out streamlining our holiday decorations and activities? Will my other child someday as an adult tell friends that holidays at our house were a disappointment because we always had to take care of Jack?

And so my feelings of inadequacy are heaped upon the scrawny shoulders of a poor defenseless elf.

It is at this point in my angst and self-flagellation that I brighten and remember that we do, in fact, have a holiday “elf-like” tradition. Admittedly, a bit strange, but that’s how we roll.

I present to you our alternative to The Elf on a Shelf: a broken nutcracker. I’ve christened him Krampus, in homage to the half-goat/half-demon of central European origin known for terrorizing misbehaving children during Christmastime.

My Krampus’s story began a few years ago when my parents downsized their stuff. My mom returned the nutcracker I bought years before. Unlike me, my mother is a very detail-oriented person. She takes the time to meticulously wrap up and box her holiday decorations,  so naturally I received that nutcracker in mint condition, despite its being over 25 years old. It proudly held a stein and a pretzel, along with every ridiculous Bavarian stereotype we Americans assign. (Sorry, Germans!)

Of course, having no patience for the art of systematic packing, I threw the nutcracker in a random box at the end of the season. When I exhumed him from the depths of my basement the following year, he looked a bit worse for wear, broken and dusty. His gemuetlich beer stein reduced to a shiv, his jaunty pretzel lost in holiday debris. Only the festive “pretzel napkin” remains– oddly attached at his leg, a sort of Bavarian loincloth.

My second born made the fatal error of telling me nutcrackers were disturbing. And because I’m that mom who delights in torturing her children, my initial response was GAME ON. Because what’s the point of having children if you can’t freak them out from time to time? And so began our tradition of hiding the broken nutcracker around the house over the holidays.

Jack doesn’t really care about nutcrackers, but he loves to hear where we hide it and then laugh at his sibling. He may be nonverbal, but man, Jack loves jokes on other people and watching them get annoyed. Schadenfreude is alive and well at our house.

The first time I hid Krampus, it was on the bed, concealed by a comforter. Pulling back the sheets to hop in bed exposed Krampus, daring not to scream.

After a time or two of getting half irritated/half amused by our pranks, our child went on the offensive, striking back by hiding that freaky thing in my walk-in closet, the nutcracker dangling by a string. Then Mike and I waited a day or two and retaliated–I think maybe we stuffed it in a backpack so Krampus could visit at school.

And so it went throughout that season. Now we do it yearly. No fuss or muss. Easy peazy. And most importantly, no clean up. By now, Jack just rolls his eyes and laughs while he gorges on store bought Christmas pastries.

So I guess I’m not as subversive as I once thought. I may not use the Elf, nor trash my house to show its naughtiness. But I get the idea of using it as a family tradition.

Our Krampus custom provides us with laughter, an antidote to holiday stress. I find meaning in our own curated holiday artifacts. Krampus stands in solidarity with my lit-up Santa flamingo lawn ornament, perhaps of questionable taste, but whatever. Krampus and the flamingo don’t have to make sense to anyone but us.  I realize I don’t have to march lock-step with holiday traditions created by a generic corporate entity. But I can change what doesn’t work, and adapt it to something more “us.” We design our lives around certain strategies which suit our needs for the rest of the year. Why should that stop at Christmas?