The premise seems simple enough: a sometimes slightly naughty little elf visits a child each day before Christmas and reports that child’s behavior back to Santa Claus. That is the crux of a growing tradition called “Elf on the Shelf”, a commercial venture that has enjoyed tremendous popularity among parents with small children. Experts are now saying the tradition may lead to conditioning a child to accept “Big Brother”.
Laura Pinto, a digital technology professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, recently published a paper titled “Who’s the Boss” on the doll, saying the idea of it reporting back to Santa each night on the child’s behavior “sets up children for dangerous, uncritical acceptance of power structures”. She says:
When children enter the play world of The Elf on the Shelf, they accept a series of practices and rules associated with the larger story. This, of course, is not unique to The Elf on the Shelf. Many children’s games, including board games and video games, require children to participate while following a prescribed set of rules. The difference, however, is that in other games, the child role-plays a character, or the child imagines herself within a play-world of the game, but the role play does not enter the child’s real world as part of the game. As well, in most games, the time of play is delineated (while the game goes on), and the play to which the rules apply typically does not overlap with the child’s real world.
Elf on the Shelf is an extension of the “naughty or nice” tradition associated with Santa Claus in some cultures. In the USA, the tradition has been perpetuated by popular songs, such as Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which says “he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake”. But European cultures follow similar traditions with Father Christmas or Sinterklaas bringing less-than-appealing gifts for naughty kids. The idea certainly did not begin with Elf on the Shelf.
Parents are likely the bigger part of the problem than the tradition inspired by Elf on the Shelf. After all, parents control the elf tradition.
“You’re teaching (kids) a bigger lesson, which is that it’s OK for other people to spy on you and you’re not entitled to privacy,” she tells the Toronto Star.
She calls the elf “an external form of non-familial surveillance,” and says it’s potentially conditioning children to accept the state acting that way, too.
“If you grow up thinking it’s cool for the elves to watch me and report back to Santa, well, then it’s cool for the NSA to watch me and report back to the government,” according to Pinto.
Others concur with Pinto’s theory.
“It’s a little creepy, this idea that this elf is watching you all the time,” Emma Waverman, a blogger with Today’s Parent, tells the paper. She also doesn’t like that the story uses a threat – “nice” and “naughty” lists – to produce good behavior.
“It makes the motivation to behave something that’s external,” she says. “If I’m not around or if the elf is not around, do they act crazy?”
“Children potentially cater to The Elf on the Shelf as the ‘other,’ rather than engaging in and honing understandings of social relationships with peers, parents, teachers and ‘real life’ others,” Pinto writes.
“It’s worth noting that Pinto doesn’t object to the Elf on the Shelf’s Jewish counterpart, the Mensch on a Bench, which she characterized as ‘benign.’ Unlike the elf, the mensch doesn’t report to anyone at night but stays put, watching over the Hanukkah menorah,” the paper reports.
The websites associated with My Merry Christmas that support Santa tracking and interaction with the North Pole are strongly opposed to the idea of Santa spying. “Kids are concerned about being watched,” says SantaUpdate.com lead writer “Elf Ernest”, who answers actual questions from children and posts them on My Merry Christmas. “We believe the active imagination of adults and children alike contribute to the magic of the season and it is mostly harmless fun. But the idea that an elf or even Santa himself monitors and arbitrates behavior is a theme we have to stay away from because in the thousands of emails we process every day we can see what a concern it is especially for the kids. It isn’t necessary in the traditions of Christmas. Santa can and does encourage good moral behavior without the sinister watchdog-like presence of having a spy.”
Children can sign up to become a “secret spy for Santa” whose job is not to watch other kids but to watch for dangers to Santa on his flight. “We have this feature expressly to teach an alternative to the whole naughty and nice theme.”
Elf on the Shelf has also come under criticism for the lengths and extremes parents go to in order to create fun. In so doing, many times the elf ends up demonstrating unacceptable behavior — and getting away with it.
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