“Like most things that get big in America, the Elf on the Shelf was bound to cross to these shores eventually. Now it’s available in the UK, the Elf on the Shelf is spreading like wildfire.”
Kate Whiting What is Elf on the Shelf? All you need to know about the Christmas craze
“Horrible passive aggressive doll that ‘watches you’ then tells on you to Santa.”
Amazon review
For many years we had plastic Elf sitting with his knees firmly tucked under his chin. He sat – because he had loop in his head – firmly hanging from one of the branches of our annual Christmas tree. He was a bauble like many of the others – currently the weirdest one on the tree is a pickled gherkin but that’s another story! Then as the current millennium developed a new Elf appeared on the Christmas roster and the term Elf on the Shelf became more and more frequently heard. Why?
Another book on the she-Elf-ie!
In the Strange and Sweet history of Elf on the Shelf the Huffpost summaries the story as follows:
“According to the book, the elf is a “scout elf” who sits on a shelf or table or another part of a family’s home to observe the children’s behavior during the holiday season.
Each night, the elf flies back to the North Pole and reports the kids’ actions to Santa Claus to inform his naughty and nice list picks. The elf then returns before the children wake up and settles in a new part of the house, creating a hide-and-seek game each morning.”
The Elf would visit from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve suggesting that parents would set up the Elf between these areas.The authors, Carol Aebersold and her daughter, Chanda Bell of thisT 2005 children’s picture book appear to be almost single handedly created their own custom – developed and spread by social media. Carol Aebersold stated that they got the idea from a family tradition that she Carol started for her two children in Georgia USA in the 1970s:.
“We had an elf growing up for as long as we can remember. Our elf was named Fisbee, and Fisbee of course would report to Santa Claus at night and be back in a different position in our house the next day,” Pitts explained. “We loved it. It was a chance for us to tell Santa directly what maybe we might want for Christmas, or to do good deeds so that Santa would know about them.”
When Aebersold was a child herself, Fisbee was more like an ornament that stayed on the Christmas tree and didn’t move. But the tradition morphed over time, and when she became a mother, she told her kids the elf would magically fly around at night and mustn’t be touched or it would lose its magic ― likely “to protect it, because we were pretty rambunctious children,” said Pitts.
The idea of a magical elf that flies to the North Pole at night and reappears in a surprise location was “super fun and whimsical” to the twins and their brother, Brandon, Pitts recalled. “It had all of us racing out of bed in the morning to find our elf!”
Help your Elf
As the custom developed it appears rules developed now on the book’s website:
- “A scout elf cannot be touched. Christmas magic is very fragile and if a scout elf is touched it may lose that magic and be unable to fly back to the North Pole.”
- “A scout elf cannot speak or move while anyone in the house is awake! A scout elf’s job is to watch and listen.”
Of course each night once the children have gone to bed the parents would have to find new places to place the Elf; which has resulted in some amusing locations and a whole range of images shared on social media.
It is thought that 2007 was an important point when actress Jennifer Garner was photographed with the Elf on the shelf box and soon the booksellers were flooded with orders and toy stores started selling the product. Now over 11 million elves have been sold and it has spread across the world including Great Britain.
Elf and safety warning
The custom hasn’t always been welcomed. Notwithstanding the hundreds of parents who have had to think about where to place the Elf each night and the horrendous middle of the night moment when a parent has just remembered they have not moved it, the have been other concerns.
In Who’s the Boss? “The Elf on the Shelf” and the normalization of surveillance Professor Laura Pinto reports that:
“Although The Elf on the Shelf has received positive media attention and has been embraced by millions of parents and teachers, it nevertheless represents something disturbing and raises an important question. When parents and teachers bring The Elf on the Shelf into homes and classrooms, are they preparing a generation of children to accept, not question, increasingly intrusive (albeit whimsically packaged) modes of surveillance?”
But psychological impact aside many such as The Atlantic columnist Kate Tuttle have questioned its position as a tradition, seeing it as:
“a marketing juggernaut dressed up as a tradition.”
But then I would say so are virtually half of our current customs and traditions – divorced as they are from what they really stood for!
This has ranged from reports on Amazon which states it is a
“My 4 year old cried and didn’t want it in the house.”
In search of traditional customs and ceremonies 