If I found time machine I’d travel back to November 2017 and talk myself out of inviting an Elf on the Shelf into our home over Christmas.
I have three sons who are in their 20s and they did just fine without an elf disrupting their routine.
Our daughter is 10 and many of her childhood experiences are different.
Do you remember when it was just Father Christmas who wanted to know if you were naughty or nice?
Not anymore, this Father Christmas doesn’t even want to work and not only that, I have to do the work for him.
He’s probably on Santa-link and living it up with Rudolph’s red light snout.
It’s like the self-checkouts at the stores where the customers do a job once assigned to an employee.
Children also talk among themselves and tell tales about what their elf got up to.
Some elves bring gifts and leave elaborate scenes to be discovered in the morning.
Not me, some parents have set the bar so high I’d rather drink at it than meet it.
I’d be Googling ideas at midnight because I ran out of creative ways to present our elf.
His first visit happened in 2017 when my daughter was three.
She named him Speedy and every morning he’d be in a different place, on many occasions he’d be galivanting with glamour couple Barbie and Ken.
It was all very PG because she was little, but that didn’t mean hubby and I didn’t behave like 12 year olds during the set up process.
There is a rule with these elves, that if a child touches them too often, they lose their magic.
I don’t know who made the rule, but they deserve a medal.
If children move an elf around parents must find them before moving them overnight.
I learned that the hard way when I decided to set up an elaborate scene that involved coco pops and tissue paper.
I couldn’t find Speedy and I was the one in the doo-doo.
The next morning my daughter was upset that Speedy was still inside the cupboard of her toy kitchen.
“He had a long trip and elves need their sleep so they don’t always move every day,” I explained.
It was an off the cuff explanation but she bought it and Speedy became a lazy elf who slept a lot.
Fell asleep and forgot to move him? He’s resting.
Can’t think up a creative idea? He’s resting.
Then on Christmas day Speedy left the house and went back to the North Pole.
No, he didn’t, Speedy was stuffed into a draw and hidden under books.
One year I couldn’t find Speedy.
The only elves left on shop shelves were wearing black shirts and that wasn’t how our Speedy rolled.
Thinking on my feet I told my daughter Speedy graduated from elf school and that was his senior shirt.
Shew.
After the usual antics I pushed him into the back of a drawer.
When she was six she found black shirt Speedy in the drawer.
“Why is he still here and not back with Santa?” she asked.
I explained it was Christmas magic that made him come alive into different elf bodies and she bought it.
Over the years I have lost three elves and bought three replacements, only to find them again.
When my daughter was seven she found them in the drawer of my bedroom closet.
She thought they’d died and came at me with their bodies limp in her hands, demanding an answer as if I was an elf mass murderer.
My daughter turned 11 this year and the past two years she’s played along with the Santa and Elf on the Shelf ruse because she enjoys the tradition even if deep down she knows it’s not real.
This year she asked if Speedy was coming and I said, ‘no, because when a child turns 10 the elf is reassigned to someone else who is younger’.
She didn’t question it and accepted my answer, but with that came the realisation this was the last time I’d experience Christmas magic through the eyes of my child.
Saying no to our elf through time travel might seem a little elf-ish but it’s one chore I can cross of my list and that makes me elf-ully happy.
