Holiday Preparation Day 27 | Ralphie, Our Elf

Do you remember what it was like to wait for Christmas when you were a kid? Do you remember the delicious anticipation? The waiting and trying so hard to be good when Christmas seemed like it was years away. The way I see it, his Elf on the Shelf trend plays on those anxious feelings while giving parents a good behavior bribe.

You know how this works, right? Ralphie was sent by Santa Claus. He came with a book all about him, and we gave him his name. And each night, he uses his Christmas magic to fly back to the North Pole and report to Santa how good my kids were that day. So each morning when the kids wake up, he’s in a different place in our house. He can be anywhere, and if you scope out Pinterest you’ll see some elves arrive with great flourish and fancy breakfasts, they sip syrup or make powdered sugar snow angels, toilet paper Christmas trees. It’s quite elaborate.

I don’t know that Ralphie will be the trouble or mess maker in our house. That kind of goes against my dream of a quiet and calm Christmas. So Ralphie and I are content for this elf to hide behind pictures on the wall or in the fireplace. (Right now he’s watching my husband do the breakfast dishes from the comfort of the Kitchen-aid mixer.) But in the five days he’s been here, he has tapped into my children’s imagination and sparked this elaborate story telling in Julia. He’s developed an entire personality and very real behaviors that Julia tells us about. Max is excited to find him each morning and we share green monster with him and whisper our Christmas dreams in his ear. He has peaked our Christmas excitement, and that’s wonderfully fun.

I think I love this new Christmas tradition.