To Elf or Not to Elf?

Newsflash: My Instagram feed is no longer populated solely with bowls of porridge and pictures of the Maldives. Since December 1^st, I’ve seen innumerable photos of little toy elves involved in incorrigible high jinks in the homes of many of my friends. Hashtag investigation revealed they are Elves on Shelves. If you are as puzzled as I was, don’t worry. Here is your handy need-to-know guide.

The Elf on a Shelf is an American tradition purportedly going back decades (well, on sale commercially since 2005 at least). This festive season, the elves have crossed the pond with a vengeance, eagerly waiting to leap from the shelves of John Lewis or Tesco to those in your very own home.

The premise of Elf on a Shelf is essentially an extension of Santa’s Naughty and Nice list. The little dudes are official Scouts for the big guy, and they live in your house throughout December, spying on your child’s behaviour and reporting back to Santa in the event of any misdemeanours that might warrant Christmas being cancelled. So far, so George Orwell.

It’s simple; you buy your elf in his nice red suit, take him home, and then he gets on with his surveillance and hides every morning in a different place in your house, cheekily lying in wait while your children try to find the little scamp. Except of course it’s down to you to cultivate belief in the ‘hotline to Santa’ side of things, and it’s you that will come up with all these inventive hidey-holes. Maybe not quite that simple after all.

Oh, and there’s a complicated bit about how you don’t actually own the elf, you’re just adopting him, and so the retailer who sold him to you should in fact be referred to as an Adoption Centre for Elves. And your elf is nameless, so you have to complete an online elf registration form in order to get an official Elf Adoption Certificate. Hmm. Anyone else hearing those Trumpian ‘special registration database’ alarm-bells ringing?
 

Not being a parent myself, I am constantly amazed at the lengths you have to go to in order to entertain, educate, morally guide and supervise your little ones. I assume I’d welcome any help available in the candy-cane-sugar-fest build-up to Christmas, and so initially, I admit, the idea of handing over behaviour management to a Santa Scout for a month far outweighed my concerns at any police-state undertones.

The tricky part is that in addition to an already-busy morning routine, parents have to arrange for the elf to be surprised in the middle of some exciting elfy shenanigans. Going from my Instagram evidence, this could mean he is poking about under the Christmas tree, doing a keg-stand with a bottle of Aunt Jemima’s maple syrup, or being part of a complicated skit involving some Duplo characters and a digger performing a heist on a biscuit tin.

Impressive and an absolute hoot for the kids, sure, but the level of ingenuity required to keep this up throughout December strikes me as immense. It’s the Christmas Eve palaver of planting mince-pie crumbs and sherry dregs in your living-room, not to mention shards of carefully-strewn carrot outside the front door, except you have to do it for twenty-four nights in a row.

Who will remember all the various japes your elf has got up to by the time you hit week three? You probably won’t, but you can guarantee your children will. Disappointed cries of ‘But Daddy, he’s already hidden in your sock drawer,’ must haunt the dreams of elf-owning parents across the land.

Tbh, it seems the majority of elf-shelf-enjoyment is being had by grown-ups that don’t even have children. That’s certainly the impression you get from perusing #naughtyelfonashelf threads on Twitter. (Warning: do this at your peril). These elves, getting themselves into scrapes involving Barbie strip-clubs and marshmallow hot-tubs, have clearly forgotten their brief of filling in report cards and carrier-pigeoning them back to Santa. Heck, by the number of elf-sized miniature liquor bottles being emptied, I’d say they’ve forgotten which direction the North Pole is.

I'm slightly confused by the shelf part of the whole operation, the suggestion presumably being that one’s elf is to be found each day on a different shelf. There are only 4 shelves in my entire apartment, and one of them is the high-up kitchen shelf where boxes of matches and my knife-block live. If I had kids, elves would only be invoked as part of darkly modern fairy tales that illustrate why the phrase ‘keep out of reach of children’ exists.

Are care-givers across the country spending this month endlessly debating the health and safety implications of placing an acrobatic elf on a bathroom shelf, where he’s abseiling down the hairdryer flex, or hiding in a fort made of aspirin bottles.

 

And when you run out of shelves, what then?

Actually, it seems that the shelf aspect of things isn’t all that critical. The Tesco product description of our elvish playmate suggests that he can sit ‘on the mantelpiece, table or even nestled in the Christmas tree.’ See, not a shelf in sight. Might as well call him Elf that’s Just an Elf.

My research led me to several reviews from parents who embrace the elf, and the power he wields. Notably, the single mum of 6 who praises the elf for keeping her sane and turning her children into angles (although I query the sanity and fatigue levels of someone who can’t spell angels).

However, many families are not fans of the elfdom. It’s just too fraught with stress. The playground competition of ‘their elf does more interesting stuff than our elf’ is a level of parenting critique that no-one needs. And life is far too short to ever be involved in a fight with a co-parent where your line of argument is that ‘it is completely inappropriate for Naughty the Elf to be hiding with his head poking out of the toaster.’

So, toy companies, bravo indeed. You’ve succeeded in creating the must-have toy of the festive season that sold out before December even began. I trust that you have a contingency plan for the middle of the month, when the parents and pitchforks descend, demanding that their shelves go back to being elf-free zones.

And as for the elves, I can only hope that they are receiving adequate wages and benefits for such gruelling 24-hour surveillance shift-work, and not just being fobbed off with vague whisperings of ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ and a bushel of sugarplums.


[Photo By An Errant Knight - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41334323]

Attack of the Wooden Mouths (or, how hangovers are different in your 30s)

By ori2uru - originally posted to Flickr as champagne tower, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5236607

On Sunday morning, I opened my eyes very slowly.

I was expecting the terrible sensation when your eyelids are stuck together and you forgot that they might be, and then you realise they are and your body half-heartedly tries to prepare itself for bright lights and the onslaught of gravity, while your brain attempts self-preservational shutdown by refusing to find out what might be going on behind all the blurry vision-fog and eye-glue.

You see, on Saturday evening, I went to two parties. Two parties. This is not the sort of social gallivanting that I generally get up to (query to self: have I ever done it?).

The first was my Work Do (very Parisian, in the sense that there was very nice free champagne until it all ran out and was replaced with questionable white wine), and the second was the Christmas party of my lovely Italian/Canadian friends (very Parisian, in the sense that there was very nice champagne all night. The sort that comes in the incredible extra-large bottles that are my favourite, but that are also very heavy and difficult to pour out of, so it’s altogether better if someone else does it).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t sink 15 glasses of champagne and get completely hammered, as the Jen at Christmas Parties of Yore would have done. These days I am (mostly) civilised and a grown-up. (NB. We won’t mention the Negroni-fuelled fiasco the night before these same Italian/Canadian friends got married in July).

But over the course of a delightful evening, I did drink quite a lot. And I probably deserved at least a bit of a hangover. Or, as the French so aptly put it, a gueule de bois, a mouth of wood.

Yet on Sunday morning there was not a headache or a spinning room in sight. I got up, ate porridge with seeds and goji berries, and smugly went about my day. This is fantastic, I thought; I’ve finally cracked it. Champagne is my drink. I’m never going to drink anything else again.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of my story.

It turned out the gods of the Wooden Mouth had other plans for me.

First up, I went to a lovely fancy oratorio choir concert that my friend Pam was performing in. I sat with two other friends, we enjoyed the beautiful music, and then we all went off to get the Métro together, feeling wonderfully cultured and stuffing our faces with mince pies as we discussed which station we hate the most. For me, it’s Châtelet Les Halles, hands down, which was ironically the station we were heading to.

And that’s where my troubles began.

My magical Métro pass, which I love and which makes my life reasonably-priced and easy, didn’t work. The gate didn’t slide open when I beeped, so when I re-beeped, I initiated the angry-sounding DOUBLE BEEP ALERT noise. Leaving me trapped on the wrong side of the barrier to my friends.

My brain could not handle this unexpected development at all. It was Sunday, so naturally all the ticket booths were closed, and there was not a single staff-member to be seen. My subconscious started heading towards a group of camo-wearing machine-gun-toting soldiers as the only available figures of authority in the vicinity before I stopped it. What did I think they could do, shoot the barriers down to let me through?

I wandered aimlessly around the station for a bit, and then sent a pathetic ‘Save yourselves. Go on without me’ message to my friends, before realising I no longer had any idea which of the 94 different barriers I was supposed to be trying to get through (there are many excellent reasons why Châtelet is the worst station).

Eventually, I beeped my way through 3 different barriers at random and I think the system let me rejoin my friends out of sheer pity.

To recover from all this, we went to have a festive drink and a welcome sit-down at Starbucks. Where I forgot my own name.

I was busy practising saying ‘gingerbread latte’ in my head in a French accent so that it would be intelligible for the nice French barista (it didn’t work; I had to repeat it six times before we got anywhere). And when she asked my name, poised to write it on my cup, I went completely blank.

Most of my students believe I’m called Jan or Jane, so part of me was excited to rectify things ever so slightly and get this right. And then I heard my friend Jo somewhere to my right declaring that her name was Hélène, and I realised it would be simpler to just say a more normal French name. But I couldn’t think of any of those either.

I said Jen. She wrote Jan. I said, No, no, with an ‘e’. So she wrote Jane.

My friends went on to have dinner that evening, but I decided to quit while I was (not at all) ahead. As I was walking home, a group of people asked me the way to the Opera House. They spoke French, but with Spanish-sounding accents, so I was overjoyed to not only understand but also to be able to answer their question. Of course, I declared confidently, it’s down that street. About 10 minutes’ walk. You’re welcome.

It isn’t. It’s precisely the opposite direction from where I so airily pointed. I’m sorry, Spanish tourists. Please google a picture of the Opera House; it really is beautiful, and well worth a visit.

I’m self-imposing a one-party-per-night limit from now on.

Come On Get Festive.

So, it’s that time of year again. You know, the most wonderful one. With kids jingle belling, and much mistletoeing, and other made-up words we’re apparently allowed to use just because it’s CHRISTMAS. Yes, that’s right. I upper-cased it. It’s CHRISTMAS.

It’s no good trying to resist it. CHRISTMAS is bloody everywhere. I’m writing this at my Mum’s dining-table, and there are 3 ridiculous signs that it’s CHRISTMAS all within my current line of sight:

1. There is a Yankee candle on the coffee table that is RED APPLE WREATH flavoured. What the hell is an apple wreath? Why (never mind how) would I go about attaching red apples to wreaths? Said candle also proclaims to be ‘with authentic Yankee fragrance’. Whatever that means.

2. On the sideboard I can see the weird metal thing I won in my cracker on Christmas Day. I can only assume it’s some kind of heavy-duty paperclip. Or maybe a bookmark. Either way, it’s ridiculous.

3. Perhaps the most ridiculous thing of all is sitting right in front of me. It’s a new addition to my parents’ array of Christmas decorations, a jaunty little silver wire tree that sits on the table. Now most of their decorations are pretty much as old as I am and therefore have history and memories attached - our Snoopy and Woodstock bauble things, for example. Amazing.

So this new tree is a bit of interloper. Which is perhaps why I somewhat irrationally, TOTALLY HATE IT. It’s annoying and too modern and seems to be somehow spring-mounted so that with every letter I type it jauntily bounces about. See, annoying. But I can’t quite bring myself to move it (or bin it). That would label me as the Scrooge character in our little war. And I’m not having that.

So anyway, I hope you’re all having a fabulous Christmas, with your very own personally perfect balance of eggnog, brandy sauce, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, sherry and any other festive liquids you may require.

And don’t worry if it’s not all going perfectly. Christmas can be tough. And sometimes things go wrong.

I remember the year the sprouts got mislaid, so that my Dad had to drive round the whole of Huddersfield on Christmas morning attempting to locate some. And god bless the cornershop newsagent in Brighouse who was a) open and b) inexplicably sold sprouts.

Or the year the turkey somehow got put in the oven upside-down. At one point, my Dad thought he was carving some kind of 5-legged poultry mutant. I think that one will forever remain a bit of a mystery.

So, in the interests of CHRISTMAS spirit and spreading festive cheer, here are 3 stories to cheer you up if your goodwill starts to unravel. They are all true traditions provided by my actual friends. You know who you are. Thank you for sharing. You’ve all brightened my life with your festive tales.

1. Friend 1 is now 30. She is a rational mild-mannered adult with a very important responsible job. And yet she still fights her older sister and father to get through the living-room door on Christmas morning in order to be the first to reach the presents. And I don’t mean they playfully bat each other out of the way. I mean they have an actual violent battle using the cardboard tubes from rolls of wrapping-paper. Sadly, she didn’t win this year. I have yet to find out who was successful in beating their relatives into submission.

2. Leaving a sherry and a mince pie out for Santa, and a carrot for Rudolph, is a longstanding tradition for many families. I was amused this year to see via my friends on Facebook that somewhere in north Wales, Rudolph got a neatly-peeled carrot, and in Kent he was the recipient of a little pile of pre-chopped Marks and Spencer carrot batons. This would horrify Friend 2, who is much more serious about reindeer refreshments. She and her brother used to leave a bucket of water and a bale of hay in the garden. What good is one measly carrot? And this is my favourite part… after opening their presents, they had to go outside and shout up into the skies, ‘THANK YOU SANTA’. How their parents and all their neighbours must have laughed.

3. This one is possibly my favourite. Friend 3 spent Christmas a few years ago with her sister’s family. Friend 3 is very normal and lovely. And so it’s not all that surprising that she’s not hugely close to her sister, who is a bit mad and weird and has some funny ideas. Oh, and she’s extremely religious. But Friend 3 went to visit, determined to embrace the funny ideas. Upon sitting down to their Christmas Dinner, she was more than a little surprised and baffled when the family started to sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Dammit, she thought. It’s my niece or nephew’s birthday, and I’ve somehow forgotten, and it’s awful, and I feel terrible. Confused, Friend 3 nevertheless politely joined in singing, and was relieved and thoroughly entertained to hear them all finish the song, with ‘Happy Birthday dear Jesus, Happy Birthday to You!’ Awesome.

Happy CHRISTMAS everyone!