blamebrampton | Reason number 58,962 why I will never understand America

I have a lengthy post with serious things and stuff and so on ready to write in my head, but thanks to the stylish and non-elf-owning

kerryblaze, I have learned about The Elf on the Shelf, which as far as I can work out is the Christmas equivalent of creepy Cabbage Patch Kids*.

It's a scary red elfy doll thing, which I think only comes in one model**, allegedly sent by Santa to watch over children and check on whether they have been naughty or nice, then fly back to report at night.

Parents are meant to move the elf around the house so it looks as though it has landed somewhere new after flying back from the North Pole early each morning. Kids are not allowed to touch the elf, or it will lose its magic***.

I have three responses to this.

1. Good grief! Don't parents have enough stress over the holiday season? It's not bad enough that in most houses this will be the last discussion of the day:
'Honey, I forgot to move the elf. Could you get up and do it?'
'Nuh-ah, I did it last night. It's your turn to find somewhere for that little bastard.'
'I hate that freaking elf.'
but there are some over-achieving people out there who do things like come up with lists of 101 things you can do with your elf. Those people worry the bejeezus out of me. I prefer the blog of the woman

kerryblaze linked me to, which shakes its head at this sort of behaviour and concludes with: "I think I'm just going to lay my Elf on his shelf, tape wires and hoses to him and tell my kids he's in a coma and hopefully he'll recover before Christmas. That should give me some flexibility."

2. WILL NOBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!! That creepy little stalker fairy is the sort of thing that would have terrified me when I was two or three, and then filled me with loathing for adults who thought I was stupid enough to fall for such a patronising excuse for insufficient parental attention by the time I was six.
'You have to be good, baby, or the elf will tell Santa!'
'Mom, in the immortal words of Newt, "Ripley, it's just a piece of plastic."'

Should your child be a beautiful and innocent soul who has somehow managed to escape the pervasive cynicism of this modern age, the elf will be yet another piece of stress loaded onto their tiny, sweet shoulders. Imagine a sweet little munchkin doing the sorts of things that kids just do – maybe running inside without wiping her feet, burping after a glass of milk, picking his nose, or accidentally knocking things off the coffee table. If there are no adults around, that sweet munchkin can pretend it never happened, or blame the dog. But now that bloody elf is there ... watching, watching, ever watching ... Clearly it wasn't bad enough having Twilight normalise stalking for tweens and teens, now we need to extend it to the nursery set. Gah!

3. Why do the Elf on a Shelf people hate America?

Now, Americans who read this, you need to understand that most of the rest of the world really tries to like and respect the USA. When I was born, it was comparatively easy. There were still a couple of Kennedys kicking around productively in US politics and the Republican Party was mostly made up of people whose thoughts were based on ideas, not ruled by polls and ideology. Despite the horrors of the war in Vietnam and sundry South and Central American military disasters, most of us back then thought of America as a place of progress, with great writers, great scientists and great philosophers, who would every now and then come up with something astonishing that changed the world (Messrs Jobs and Gates), or at least were warm, friendly, if slightly loud, people who would go out of their way to help visitors (albeit, you might also get shot, but probably not by the people who had just helped you!).

Then things started to go a bit downhill. I could sort of understand the Reagan thing, he definitely had charisma, but Valley Girls were a bit of a strain, and we won't talk about the creepy Cabbage Patch Kids or globalised McDonald's. Not satisfied with the overall disaster that was George W Bush, you tanked the global economy and let Rupert Murdoch destroy your media, delivering in Fox News a 'news' service that makes me long for the comparatively profound insights of George W Bush.

But we still tried to see all the good -- because there's loads of it! It's not just that most of you are still warm and friendly, you have the New Yorker, and the Chicago Symphony, you have MIT and Big Bang Theory. In any debate as to the merits of the USA, there is usually a long list of positives available to the government side.

And then you go and pull shit like Elf on a Shelf****.

I fucking despair.

* I know that some people loved these things, and I apologise for harshing your squee, as it were, but one look into their fixed soulless eyes and it is obvious they are Satan's very own poppets come to convince a generation of children that sex education is pointless as babies come from Brassicas.

** No photo, because I like you and that little bugger is SCARY!

*** Queue gales of tears when Dad has stuck Elfy back on the very edge of the shelf and a light breeze is enough to send him hurtling towards the floor, stopped mid-fall by the automatic catching reflex of little Timmy, who will then be convinced that he has KILLED THE ELF AND SANTA WILL HATE HIM FOREVER!!!

****At least there's a backlash that includes bloggers like the one above, and, from the comments there, people like this one. I love them.

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From:

melusinahp.livejournal.com

Fortunately the UK only has harmless holiday traditions for children, like burning effigies of ancient traitors over bonfires. The US certainly doesn't have a monopoly on unsettling Christmas traditions.. ;) The entire holiday seems ripe for use in parental blackmail, what with the threat of coal in the stocking, kidnapping or disembowelment.

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Reason number 58,962 why I will never understand America

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