For obvious reasons, I’m reminded of Roy Zimmerman’s “Buy War Toys for Christmas”. Maybe he could do a follow up with the Elf?
#But it’s a Christmas Tradition !!!
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It’s a shame that the Argentinian plains don’t need more surveillance.
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At our house, the kids and I have spent the last decade or so planting an “evil krusty doll” around the house. Often, a child would wake up from a nap, only to find the doll ( who holds a little kitchen knife), has been sitting on the edge of their bed, watching them sleep. Or you would open a cabinet, and there he is.
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Off to Kickstarter! I have a crib mobile “Damocles” that needs funding.
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Not sure how this is any different than Santa with his knowledge of every single thing you do throughout the year and his near-constant list-making. In fact Christmas seems to have a long standing function of surveillance & behavioral reenforcement for parents.
I first heard about Elf on a Shelf from a listing in a Sky Mall catalog, maybe ten years ago at the most.
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Shelf Elf is fantastic for messing with your kids. My wife and I love it, despite the effort of keeping up the gag. He’s always showing up in odd places, doing weird things. Making messes.
Lately I put him in the bathroom. You only see him if you sit down.
The whole creep factor is part of the fun.
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I hide an elf on the shelf each night after my wife goes to bed. If she doesn’t find it by dinner the next night, I claim it.
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The Santa myth is the only magic story we indulge our children in. I figure that the tools my kids develop to cynically demolish it as the y get older will be useful for any other woo they come across.
I came really close to getting the Elf, though, because I love silly mysteries.
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There are certainly people who have issues with that as well, but I think one difference is that it doesn’t blur the lines between the natural and the supernatural as much.
If Santa really is an omniscient executor of divine justice, then there isn’t much you can do about that anyway. Being to told to accommodate a tangible being with apparently limited perspective and to be complicit in your own surveillance is something different.
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That’s a pretty subtle distinction to expect a bunch of present- & holiday-crazed kids to make.
not judging, just saying, if you are gonna do the stupid elf? make it GOOD
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Wow, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this horrible toy.
I guess I had just finished college around when it was created, and didn’t hang around too many parents with kids until around now, and even now my friends with kids aren’t the kind that will get this awful thing.
Seriously, they just invent a “tradition” and everyone goes all-in and buys the junk? These people are marketing geniuses.
The WP article was fairly sarcastic about the whole thing, but to me that just shows how well the marketers have succeeded in making people really think of this as a harmless “tradition.”
(We still haven’t thought about what we’ll tell our two-year-old about Santa. It hasn’t had to come up yet.)
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Nah, I think the distinction is correct.
Santa knowing everything is no different from God knowing everything. And for the vast majority of kids this is abstract enough that they don’t really have to think about it.
But this is a snitch that actually lives in your own house, that you have to acknowledge every day, that you’re supposed to talk to every day. It’s way, way more in your face about it.
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Saint Nick on your di–
Never mind.
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Tis the season for warrantless wiretapping!
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