A TALE OF THREE ELVES
I don’t think I’m wrong when I say the world is over these blasted Elves. But, for the record, I was always there. Years ago, when having kids was more of an idea than a reality, I refused to participate in Elf on the Shelf for so many reasons.
PRICE. Those red devils are ridiculously overpriced. I mean, seriously! It’s a tiny felt body with a plastic head. We used to be able to buy things like that at the Dollar Tree. The advent of Elf on the Shelf and the accompanying price tags should have been an early indicator to all that inflation was looming on the economic horizon.
HAVE YOU SEEN THEM? They are creepy. I’ll admit I also suffer from “broken face syndrome.” I smile—a lot. But the faces on these “elves” is the kind of face you’d expect to find on a creepy psychopath Xmas killer, not a children’s toy. The fact that there isn’t a B-Rated horror film with this as the premise… disappointing.
THERE’S SOMEONE WATCHING. Always. The concept is atrocious. This little Elf is watching you, moving around your home, committing petty acts of mischief, and then reporting back to the North Pole so that Santa can decide how good/bad you are. My Amazon echo already does that for the government. I don’t need more than one thing in my house tracking my every movement and recording my every word.
Honestly, though, It was the last one that got to me, especially as a young college graduate, who didn’t yet have kids and refused to lie to his hypothetical non-existent (at the time) children about Santa, elves, and creepy dolls.
I hated the concept. I still kind of do. It’s the exact opposite of the message Jesus brought. Jesus taught that God loves us and treats us in a way that is better than what we deserve (i.e., grace and mercy). Instead, Santa and the Elf on The Shelf teaches my kids that they receive gifts only when they behave. Gag. Hated it.
Fast forward about ten years, one wife and three kids… and at this moment, three Elves are sitting on our dining room table. Yup. You read that right. Three of the ugly little vermin: Krampus, Bellschnikel, and SnowFlake (the first two were named by yours truly).
I bought the first one as a joke when I was a student pastor, and affectionately named him Krampus. If you don’t know how ironic and beautiful of a name that is for the Elf, you need to stop reading now and google Krampus. You’re Welcome.
Years later, a friend of mine bought me Elf #2, a genuinely horrifying little fella that we affectionately call Bellschnikel.
Those two vermin have lived in our Christmas storage for years, collecting dust, never used until this year. My daughters found Krampus and Bellschnikel while we were setting up the Christmas tree and squealed with glee. They couldn’t wait to see what the elves would do, the mischief they would cause, and the Christmas cheer they would spread. My two oldest girls spent hours talking about them, the rules, and the magic… and I melted. The kids have got me pegged.
Magic. They got me: hook, line, and sinker. The Christmas magic, while it isn’t what Christmas is about, is something anyone with a childhood remembers fondly. Every Christmas, when the tree went up, magic. Every spring, when things started turning green and imagination went wild thinking there were leprechauns behind every tree, magic. Every Halloween, when I knew that monsters roamed the streets after the festivities were over, picking off any kids that dared to go out after midnight, magic. Magic may be the wrong word. Some of you probably hate that I used it, so let’s call it what it is: wonder and imagination. Two remarkably powerful things that, as we grow older, vanish.
How crazy is that, as we get older and experience more of life, more of creation, we lose our sense of wonder. Our imagination leaves with our innocence, and we relegate it all to the realm of kids and fairy stories. How awful, especially when we are characters in the most extraordinary story of them all, the story that every story is a mere shadow of.
So this year, my kids got elves. They got a little bit of magic and some mischief. That feeling they get in their tummies when they wake up and go searching for those cursed elves, the squeal they make when they find them, and the excitement that they have when they wake up Gabbi and me to tell us what the elves did while we all sleeping is training for the real thing.
They were made to search and hunt, to explore and discover, by their maker. God delights with His kids as they delight. And the insatiable desire to share that, the magic, the wonder, is exactly what God designed us to do.
Imagination is a powerful thing. A thing that, when used rightly, deepens our experience of the real story we live in while telling us stories of imagined worlds, heroes, and monsters.
Imagination is proven to squash fear, develop creativity, keep your mind young, and develop empathy. It’s not just for kids and holidays. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”