Bah Humbug - The Elf on the Shelf

Take that, Elf!

From the "about us" section on the web page:

The tradition begins when Santa sends his scout elves out to Elf Adoption Centers. Waiting for their families to bring them home, these patient elves hibernate until their family reads The Elf on the Shelf, gives their elf a very special name, and registers their adoption online. Once named, each scout elf will receive its Christmas magic and become a part of the family’s Christmas each and every year.

Excellent listeners and even better observers, these scout elves are the eyes and ears of Santa Claus. Although they cannot be touched, or else they may lose their magic, the elf will always listen and relay messages back to Santa. Taking in all the day-to-day activities around the house, no good deed goes unnoticed; these scout elves take their job seriously.

Chanda Bell is one of the true visionaries behind the best-selling book, The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition. A former reading and English teacher, her ability to hone in on the desires of the American consumer to create more meaningful family moments...

Christa Pitts is the business mind in the family owned and operated company that created The Elf on the Shelf. Before joining forces with her sister and mother, Pitts spent five years as one of the most beloved hosts on QVC, where her warmth and upbeat personality made her a household name.

omg the scout elves blurb makes me want to KILL MAIM TORTURE

"Occasionally a scout elf may be forced to rendition a wayward family member to one of our undisclosed 'black' sites. Know that your loved ones are in full care of our highly trained scout elves and will be returned to you safe and sound as soon as the desired level of compliance has been reached. Trust us, and you will have no reason to fear."

Santanamo.

Of my four siblings, I'm the only one with any true memory of my great-grandmother, who died in 1979 just before I turned six. Let me tell you about this woman.

Once when we were visiting her in Memphis, she told me she wanted me to see something. We walked past the bedroom and there was some (fake) dog shit. "Oh, look at that," she said to me. "Someone must've let a dog in here!"

There was no dog.

We walk past this couch/bench thing she had in her kitchen where there was a puddle of (fake) vomit. "Oh, no!" she said. "Someone threw up in here!"

The only people I knew of in the house was her, me, my mother and two-year-old sister. And none of them looked sick.

That's when we sat down. She took a bottle of Coke, popped the cap off with the bottle-opener that was screwed into the door-jamb, gave me the bottle and sat down next to me. As I started to drink from the bottle, she focused through a doorway of the kitchen toward another refrigerator she kept near the back door. And that's when I saw the (fake) hand sticking out between the doors.

She also had in her house above the curtain rods these golden cherubs, who at night when the lamp shone up through the lampshade and toward the ceiling, would cast very passive and blank judgement on whatever it was I was doing.

So yes, this thing stirs a few forgotten vibes in me. There's no way I'd introduce sentient toy elves into my home, having them appear over here and now over there to my children. It seems like the adults had a grand time thinking this one up, but there's no way a kid was involved in this invention process. If I'm a little unnerved by it all, I can only imagine how my five-year-old – who we sorta had to talk down the first time she saw Woody and Buzz go limp in Toy Story – would react.

The monkey with the bloodshot eyes, bared teeth, and clanging cymbals scared the crap out of me as a kid, but I wasn't permanently scarred by it. Kids need just a touch of fright every now and then.

pplains you're so otm about no kids being involved in this garbage

the condescension of it really pisses me off

I can guarantee you NO KIDS were included in the development of this thing.

http://www.mikecornelison.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/joe-biden-cymbal-crashing-monkey.gif

i am *this* close to flagging u for that JF

JERK I HATE U

Beeps' least favorite part of Toy Story 3 -- and that includes the part where all the toys are nearly incinerated.

That toy-guilt stuff ruins Toy Story imho. Can't the toys have an adventure without continually being under threat of getting chucked out, imprisoned, given away to bad kids or violated in one of dozens of ways? It's like fucking Vietnam. None of my children enjoyed Toy Story 3 because they were so stressed out about the continual threats of torture etc on the main characters.

As for the Elf on the Shelf, I've ignored the "naughty or nice" part of the Santa yarn with my children. It's only little kids who believe in Santa anyway so why give them more stuff to worry about? I am a hippy though.

Ugh my mother in law brought this up on the weekend - apparently all her friends' grandkids have one; I can only assume we will receive one as a gift from her eventually. My kids are too little for it still but even when they're older this will not be for us.

Through playgroups I know lots of families who have one and I think they're a bit mental, but some mums I've talked to have foregone the surveillance aspect with their kids and just done fun things like "oh look the elf drew you a picture last night!" Or whatever. I'm still not on board with pretending a doll is literally alive though, and vg is otm about it being super condescending and just really unnecessary.

I had no fucking clue what this thing was and now I'm super creeped out by it.

Whoah

They always said that clicking on strange threads late at night would lead me to a bad end. I never knew how right they were.

Buying some sort of doll for our son, showing it to him, then telling him he could never touch it would lead to like an ultimate meltdown. So cruel. Even setting aside the fucking crazy surveillance aspect. Of course, hey, the government needs to indoctrinate these kids somehow, right?

Once when I was five, it was near Christmastime and I was playing in my room. All of a sudden I heard my dad yelling from the living room and this clatter. I get up, run out to see what's going on. Dad's running back inside from the front porch and telling me, "Santa was just here! He left something for you, but took off before I could do anything!

He goes over to the fireplace, reaches up into it, and pulls out a rolled-up poster that turned out to be that one of John Denver posing with the Muppets. Right about then, I started to realize (maybe not in these terms) that holy shit, Santa Claus had just been to my house and I was too busy fucking around in my bedroom.

I didn't care about the poster. I couldn't stop thinking about what had just happened and more importantly, what I had just missed. My dad was pretty pumped, and he had only gotten to see Santa's sleigh take off. The fact that this was happening on something like December 19 didn't even faze me.

Seriously, anyone who's pulling this shit on their children are either sociopaths or they're somehow that rare human that was never a kid to begin with.

Haha have I told the one about how my mom couldn't figure out why my little sister didn't seem to be looking forward to Christmas on the first year that she was old enough to understand what Christmas was? Eventually my mom found her in tears, wringing a blanket in her hands or something, terrified by the wrong-ness of a strange man coming into our house while we slept. Some reassurance was required.

It's like, Do you grown-ups hear what you're saying to us?

So who'll be the first here to have an elf on the shelf at work? He'll be like that monkey on the hat stand in the UK Office.

My dad pulled that trick on us all once, he snuck out front, hid behind a wall some way away and yelled HO HO HO, maye thru a toilet roll or somerhing, it sounded far away and hollow like it was.... oooh i dunno, UP IN THE SKY?

I *totally* bought it. Then later on at school I mentioned and got laughed at for still believing santa actually existed when I was in 3rd grade or whatever it was.

PP, I think you're ready for Festivus.

i was the last person in my grade to find out about santa claus

(whispers) grade 6

The cruel hoax known as santa abated early on for me, largely due to the kindly insistance of old siblings who tore the scales from my eyes.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2dkmwc8.gif

flagging u too z s godDAMMIT

;_;

At a very young age, I snuck down to discover my mom wrapping presents. Don't remember ever actually believing in Santa, but I'm sure I did.

My mom has very warm memories of seeing Santa outside her childhood house in the country. She thought those memories were fabricated until she was in her late 40s when her mother recounted the story of her aunt dressing up as Santa and walking through the snow around the house and into the trees.

it wasn't a hugely traumatic thing to find out about santa - I mean, I remember being upset, but then I still had a younger brother and sister. And Mum had asked me if I would be able to play a long for a while until they were old enough to find out. And I was so happy. Like, I could still behave the same way I always had. Nothing really changed. And even when my brother and sister found out, we all still got a kick out of saying to each other 'hey look want santa brought me'. Becuase I think we all sort of didn't want to be like our friends' families, where the kids are all surly and get money for christmas and get drunk at a club on christmas eve and go out wiht their friends after christmas lunch. christmas was always fun in our house, so we kinda had this weird unspoken agreeement to just keep it fun.

not in a creepy way. my parents never dressed up or put out reindeer hoof prints or anything like that. but I felt like I was lucky that I didn't have to really get that let down?

There are so many things wrong with this elf, including the fact that it doesn't officially wake up from it's coma until you register it online.

You are a grown woman, Stephanie.

http://i.imgur.com/kH8sK.png

...

Who's up for a little scatplay?

http://i47.tinypic.com/2cx998l.jpg

and

there

is

this

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V

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/c0.0.403.403/p403x403/293220_514292148593009_1100191092_n.jpg

"Don't touch it."

oh my god

See also the squatting over a cookie one upthread.

http://www.blogspot.com/photos/elf_on_the_shelf_fisting_ball_gagged_cat

it's a running gag!

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/393049_10151342769616293_2060939532_n.jpg

Ugh my mother in law brought this up on the weekend - apparently all her friends' grandkids have one; I can only assume we will receive one as a gift from her eventually. My kids are too little for it still but even when they're older this will not be for us.

― franny glass, Tuesday, 11 December 2012 03:59 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

Yup, we received one yesterday as a gift. Even though my husband and I have already agreed on it creepiness and general unacceptability, we feined enthusiasm. So now I'm worried how to respond next year when she wants to know what we named it etc.

"His name is 'Boxy' because, guess where he lives!"

Box Hill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Hill,_Victoria

I think there's More to the No Touch rule than PPlains is willing to investigate. Think Santa requires a visit from the authorities.

Yeah, human services workers might want to use something else in their investigations.

"Now where on this doll did he touch –"

"DON'T TOUCH THE DOLL! HE WILL NO LONGER BE PURE AND MAGICAL IF HE'S TOUCHED!"

now the bloody thing is on my feed too
GET IT OFF GET IT OFF ugh

posted today:

http://i412.photobucket.com/albums/pp201/sharonjoy666/D6BBD6C4-4454-496E-AC54-ADAC275EEBFE-1953-00000173221613F6.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8357/8267871198_7f8e421c1c_c.jpg

Finally, someone remembers the Reason for the Season.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8343/8243932772_dd7a32b5fe_z.jpg

Coming up next: Genitals

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8204/8232570253_bceedc406c_z.jpg

Note the straw placement

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8057/8269767947_327c76ea7a_c.jpg
http://adventuresofagrownup.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/goodfellas_body_meat_freezer_09-300x225.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8489/8284431873_3b641ab1b5_c.jpg

God, Santa. No seriously. I can't tell you how much I love watching that girl swim.

Dinovember is what we do instead, we just have dinosaurs doing goofy stuff and causing "trouble" every morning she thinks it's cute

Those kids are jumping for joy on the bed! This is a clear breach of household rule #34 and must be punished. Too bad they chose to enact their criminal deeds under the watchful eye of Dummy Surveillance Camera!

https://www.thecut.com/2017/08/cognition-builders-family-intervention-parenting-help-adhd.html

For God's sakes, let's not bring Rule #34 into this.

At a friends house and who do i see walking in but this fux0r hanging from the curtain

That cognition builders story, wtf

(xps to Karl Malone) David Bowie's "The Barfing Gnome"

https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/120204164_625933848316217_1136268561088120593_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_sid=110474&_nc_ohc=vF540pjFlwkAX_5tWUG&_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.xx&oh=5a2489bc23b23c98d8fc6a9f6572bfa7&oe=5F95BD90

When the link dies: An EotS skeleton made out of chicken bones, with barbecue sauce on it. Text: "The elf was delicious, had the cookies for dessert. Thanks! Santa"

I guess that's ketchup, not BBQ sauce.

For hope in national politics, one must still look toward Georgia:

Robert Leonard, a judge in metropolitan Atlanta, is doing what he can to stop the tyranny of the Christmas tradition of “Elf on the Shelf,” issuing an order banning the tiny creatures from sitting and spying, then dropping lumps of coal in the stockings of mischievous kids in Cobb County.

tackling the important issues

He’s got my vote!

You will hide when I say you must hide
Elf on the Shelf

I was born for spying!