Leave that Elf on the Shelf

My husband used to say “Hell hath no fury like a woman managing that Elf on the Shelf.” How right he turned out to be.

Hubs can be a curmudgeon. He hates putting up the tree, he grumbles at hanging up lights and don’t even get me started on Christmas Eve bike building. But in his heart I know he’s a Christmas softie so when I brought home the Elf on the Shelf one day I thought he would be supportive. Especially since it required zero effort from him. But he detested the idea, called the Elf “Chuckie’s twisted cousin” and predicted I would regret the whole thing.

I was charmed by the idea of my kids having their own little elf. I could only picture their happy little faces awakening to Christmas magic for a whole month before Christmas. It didn’t dawn on me the toll that it would take on me. And the heartbreak that would eventually follow when my little girl ended up in tears over the whole thing.

Elf on the Shelf claims to be a long-held tradition. The elf’s job is to spend all day in your house to keep watch over the kids and then high-tail it at night to wherever Santa is to spill the beans about whether the kids are naughty or nice. Every morning the kids find the elf anew in a different spot in the house with some new tale of misadventure that is suppose to delight and entertain.

Want to read about how far this “tradition” has morphed? Just head over to Pinterest and read the scads of young Moms engaged right now in making this tragic magic happen.

I was once one of them. I had our elf, Maynard, engaged in the season and leaving little messes all over the house, just to prove his reality. We were about a week into it and I thought the kids were having a great time. That’s when I found my 7-year-old in tears over her bowl of cereal one morning, stressed beyond belief that Maynard was going to tell on her. She called her big brother a name because of something he had done to her but Maynard had shown a propensity of forgetfulness (that was one of the reasons he was so messy) and my daughter was afraid Santa was going to hear all about her name-calling and NOT about her brother’s provocation.

It was a moment that woke me up, the prediction of my husband ringing in my ears. What was I really doing here? Is it possible a little Christmas fun could turn into something not so nice? Was this elf on the shelf thing the right thing to do? Just what was I teaching my kids with all this?

After giving it a little thought I realized I was guilty of turning everything upside-down and inside-out when it came to the lessons of Christmas and right-and-wrong for my kids:

I could go on and on. That’s just the beginning of how bad an idea like Elf on the Shelf turned out to be.

I fired Maynard.

I told my kids that instead of home-wrecking elves like Maynard Santa needed elves-in-training that could do secret acts of goodwill in our home and neighborhood. Our Elf on the Shelf tradition quickly morphed to acting on the season instead of being acted upon.

The kids LOVED the idea of being an elf over having an elf.

This change brought an immediate new spirit of Christmas and anticipation in our home. The trick to it all was secrecy and anonymous acts — nobody could know you were an elf and nobody should ever figure out when something good happened who was responsible for it.

Then an odd thing happened: instead of sweating the details of creating an all new Elf on the Shelf misadventure every night I marveled as my children, one-by-one, took over the creative process as they embraced the fun of giving and service.

As women the holiday season represents a lot for us to do. We do not need to clutter it with an absent-minded and ill-conceived tradition. There are far more simple ways to create magic with the kids.

In looking back through history the function, purpose and evolution of elves and the idea of using Santa as a means of keeping kids in check is suspect. It is NOT part of the original story. In fact, history in several cultures seems to suggest that the whole “don’t-be-naughty-or-else” thing has been an invention of parents all along, ill-conceived centuries ago.

When my husband stopped hearing about the antics of Maynard he asked me one night, “What happened? Where did he go?”

I told him that Chuckie finally found him.