For many years during the Christmas season my wife and I have moved a whimsical elf, a scout for Santa, around our home while the kids slept. Fun and harmless you might think.
Think again.
Apparently I am guilty of setting up my children “for dangerous, uncritical acceptance of power structures.” This will be news to my teen and tween who are rarely uncritical of this household’s power structure (such as it is) but who adored the Elf back in their younger days.
According to the book that comes with the Elf, behavioral slip-ups are reported to Santa each night then the Elf reappears in your home in a new location. He’s not to be touched or the magic fades.
Given the widespread popular acceptance of this toy and book, I’d say he’s really hit a magical cord in families all over the country. So I was a bit suspicious that the Elf on the Shelf is really an agent of the surveillance state. He only seemed to condition us to smile and laugh in the morning.
Mistletoe, the name given to our Elf by our children, is so sweet, so funny, and such a scamp. But then again, I’ve been known to gleefully sing the following aloud: “He sees you when you’re sleeping/He knows when you’re awake/He knows if you’ve been bad or good.” I’m obviously not a good detector of emerging panopticons.
According to the latest critics of the Elf, Laura Pinto and Selena Nemorin, by placing Mistletoe in different spots around our house, I have encouraged my children to
accept an external form of non-familial surveillance in the home when the elf becomes the source of power and judgment, based on a set of rules attributable to Santa Claus. 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.
The data is a tad inconclusive on this point because there is no data, as Pinto and Nemorin make clear. Their purpose “is to explore theoretical and conceptual concerns about the popularity and widespread educational use of The Elf on the Shelf in light of the contemporary literature on play and panoptic surveillance.”
So they use anecdotal evidence such as a story by a Huffington Post writer, Wendy Bradford, whose children would ring the doorbell before entering their own home, the better to prepare the Elf for their arrival:
Bradford would go on to lament:
I long for the days when Santa's helpers were mystical, magical, mysterious and unseen little people and not some overpriced brand. But, the times they are a-changing. If I must participate in this new "tradition," I choose to let the elf serve its purpose -- to set on a shelf and encourage my children to be "nice”… Parents need all the help they can get. Let your elf help you.
I sense that Bradford is being a tad dismissive when she refers to the Elf as an “overpriced brand.” It retails for about $30 and includes both the doll and picture book. Considering the many years that some families use and enjoy their elf, $30 doesn’t seem so bad. We’re on our sixth year.
As far as its branding, the Elf was conceived by a trio of wonderful women in Georgia led by Carol Aebersold, a former music teacher, who, with her two daughters, have turned an idea into a successful and growing business. Elf on a Shelf began as a family tradition for the Aebersolds who, many years later, had an idea, over a cup of tea, to turn their experience into a book.
That creative spark would lead Aebersold down a road fraught with dangers as she and her daughters, Chanda Bell and Christa Pitts lived the American dream:
The family sacrificed financially to self-publish, cashing in retirement accounts, maxing out credit cards and even selling a home and moving in with parents. They also accepted financial assistance from friends who believed in them, Aebersold said. “Repeatedly we have risked everything in order to make this successful,” Bell said. “If this business venture failed, I knew I could never pay off those credit cards.”
They took a big risk. Success wasn’t immediate and they worked without pay for three years, finding other creative ways to earn a living while they pitched the Elf.
Americans found something in their creation to embrace and the Elf quickly became a new Christmas tradition. Aebersold and her daughters have won numerous awards as small business owners and for their creative invention. They share the riches that have come their way as well as their time with a number of worthwhile charitable organizations dedicated to helping children and families.
They and their company embody the spirit of the season and the best of the creative economy.
But that was before their wicked ways were exposed.
Before Pinto and Nemorin pointed out that the Elf was really a manifestation of “the purpose of the panopticon”, psychologist David Kyle Johnson told us to stop tricking our children with our Christmas lies, such as Santa Claus and “your steroid shot for the Santa Lie” otherwise known as your Elf on a Shelf.
According to Johnson, your children will stop trusting you if you don’t. They may even lose their faith in God. They’ll ask,
What else might you be lying about, or tricking them into believing? (Think it's not a big deal? In some stories I have collected, children come to doubt God's existence after learning the truth about Santa; "If mom and dad are lying about Santa, they're probably lying about God too.”
The prospect of millions of children giving up their faith and turning against their parents because of a gift-giving mythic being that has antecedents in centuries of Christian and non-religious traditions is certainly, well, troubling. That millions have not done this suggests that, perhaps, the concern is misplaced.
At about the same time Johnson was calling all of us Christmas liars to account, Kate Tuttle in the Atlantic tried to get us to cleanse our homes of the creepy little spy by noting, for example, a small but persistent minority of Amazon reviewers who found “that their child behaved wonderfully in December, only to become a total terror the other 11 months of the year.”
Well. Can you imagine children being well behaved in the weeks leading up to Christmas but not entirely well behaved the rest of the year before Elf on the Shelf became popular?
I might gently suggest that if your child is a terror 11 out of 12 months of the year but the presence of a doll turns them into an angelic creature, perhaps your problem is larger than an elf.
Tuttle also seems to object to something else:
When I was little, we had a little carved wooden music box that played "Silent Night" while a Father Christmas character and a tree rotated in ever-slowing circles. It was special because it meant Christmas to us—but it was also mysterious, partly because we never saw anything like it at K-Mart, and because it seemed unique to our family. Because nobody ever told us a story about it, we got to make up our own.
That’s nice for her and an important reminder of the small treasurers of the season. But I’m not sure we, the masses who enjoy the elf, needed to be reminded of this by Tuttle or dismissed for buying something for the season at K-Mart as if by doing so we comprise the great uncultured hordes who miss that which should be important to her.
Those of us who enjoy Christmas with our Elf on the Shelf also have our own family heirlooms, stories, and traditions that help to make the season special.
In my case, the Elf takes a special place among our various holiday traditions because it brings back wonderful memories of my late Grandmother who placed elf ornaments on her Christmas tree. They looked a good deal like our Mistletoe though with attire befitting a 1970s elf. Mistletoe reminds me of the many Christmases with her. She may well have bought her elf ornaments at the stores she could afford to shop in for her many children and grandchildren. Stores such as K-Mart or the shops that dotted the landscape of my childhood: Bradlees, Two Guys, or Woolworths.
The critics of the Elf largely miss the point in their attempts to take the masses to task for their decision to add to their holiday by bringing Aebersold’s creative invention into their home.
Take a look at any of the Elves appearing on social media. They are very clearly not reporting mischief to Santa because they are chiefly responsible for their own Christmas mischief.
In our case, Mistletoe has been involved in any number of mischievous stunts since coming into our home. Very few of us here will forget the great powdered sugar fiasco of 2011. He is also the leading suspect in the perennial empty egg nag container and the missing Frozen Pudding ice cream.
The community of Elf lovers covers all sorts of social media platforms, adding to the general merriment of the season. People are clearly having fun and they are enjoying the whimsy with friends, family members, and others through social media. They are making the tradition their own, sometimes in hilariously creative ways.
He’s a toy, folks and one that has brought a lot of laughter to this family. I’m grateful this holiday season that Carol Aebersold and her daughters had a creative spark over tea. I hope their market continues to grow and more people around the world share in the merriment of their own Mistletoe.