I love winter! I love the cold and being able to bust out all of my grandpa sweaters and scarves. Boots and fuzzy socks finally get to play in the leaves and snow after the humidity and heat of summer. It is also the time for holiday celebrations and family gatherings. But somewhere in the joy and light a strange culture has emerged. It is a fairly new thing to me, I only recall it being a thing for the past couple years. Maybe it just slipped past my radar, but I just can't get behind it.

The Elf on the Shelf.

They are supposed to be Santa's "scout elves" that directly report your child's behavior to "the Boss" himself. They know if you've been bad or good and have a reputation for being naughty themselves. Entire blogs are dedicated to ideas for your elf and the home website even has ideas and gear for these elves. There is even an app that helps you plan the activities of your little elf.

Maybe its because I don't have kids, or that this was never a thing at my house, but I find the idea creepy and vaguely horrifying. You go all year just being a kid and then suddenly there is a small creature that is watching your every move. According to your parents, it is now detailing your activities and reporting it back to the man who will bring your gifts. Kids that I have met whose parents bring out the elf are suddenly extremely well behaved and wont dare to stick a toe out of line lest the Elf put it on his report.

My first thought was, why are you suddenly encouraging your children to be well behaved? Do they only have to be well behaved during the month of December with the threat of a stuffed Elf? Shouldn't you be encouraging them and guiding them towards good behavior 365 days instead of just 25?

Apparently I am not the only one who thinks that Elf on the Self is problematic. While weeding through the many ideas that drown Pinterest this time of year, I stumbled across an article that linked me to authors and professors Laura Pinto and Selena Nemorin's article, "Who's the Boss? "The Elf on the Shelf" and the normalization of surveillance". In their article, they delve into the idea that this Elf is reporting to "the Boss" nightly and how this affects a child's day to day play routines. Pinto and Nemorin talk about how for children, play is essential to integrating social and cognitive cues like learning self-control, learning what they already know and building on those things, and cooperating and socializing. They further break this down:

"Elf on the Shelf presents a unique (and prescriptive) form of play that blurs the distinction between play time and real life. Children who participate in play with The Elf on the Shelf doll have to contend with rules at all times during the day: they may not touch the doll, and they must accept that the doll watches them at all times with the purpose of reporting to Santa Claus. This is different from more conventional play with dolls, where children create play-worlds born of their imagination, moving dolls and determining interactions with other people and other dolls. Rather, the hands-off “play” demanded by the elf is limited to finding (but not touching!) The Elf on the Shelf every morning, and acquiescing to surveillance during waking hours under the elf’s watchful eye. The Elf on the Shelf controls all parameters of play, who can do and touch what, and ultimately attempts to dictate the child’s behavior outside of time used for play."

Simply, parents are forcing their children into this game that has rules set by an inanimate object that completely rules the lives of their children for those 25 days of Christmas. In their article, they mention a writer for Huffington Post, Wendy Bradford, who participates with Elf on the Shelf with her children. In accordance to the rules of the Elf, they began ringing the doorbell to their own home to make sure that the elf is prepared for them to be home. This surveillance-like activity ultimately change the way that children are viewing their world. Is it just a fun holiday tradition that keeps your kids in check for a month? Or is it teaching them to be easier to govern and keep in line?

They close the article with the following:

"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?"

The video made by Dr. Laura Elizabeth Pinto that inspired the article here.