This year’s Toy of the Year* award goes to the Elf on the Shelf. Congratulations, pragmatic hunk of felt and plastic, you avoided the recycle bin for another year and won our praise, but beware the fickle apostasy of little believers! The ice thins quickly as Abby ages beyond four.
In case you’re not familiar with this crazy, velvet rocking beast, the Elf on the Shelf is a book/toy/video/voodoo doll that makes it kitten-play to extort good behavior out of your Santa-fearing children. The rules state clearly that kids can’t touch the elf, and that the elf reports back to Santa each night on how well each child has behaved. As an adult, all you have to do is remember to move his elven ass to a new location after your kids fall asleep, and you’ll be watching your traumatized minions fall right into line until Christmas morning.
Been good, Abby? Good for you! Santa is pleased with you. Been bad, Jackson? Doh! One of your toys just morphed grotesquely into a lump of anthracite coal. (Note for chronically misbehaving kids and contrarians: put some cash into an Obama-sodomized coal stock like Alpha Natural Resources, Inc., and you just might have the last laugh when you get older.)
The elf’s effectiveness is limited only by a parent’s wickedness. Eat, Abby, the elf is watching. Go to bed, Abby, the elf can hear you. Put down the steak knife, Jackson, and step away from the snitching elf. In hindsight, it may have been an over-reach insisting that Jackson toilet train himself before turning one, in order to get a good report from the elf at the North Pole, but hey… no really permanent harm done and that kid has something to strive for next Christmas.
We pulled Chippy von Chisel (our elf’s name) out in November this year, but next year we might roll the dice and bring him out in July.
* Smart observers of the Moores might complain that we actually had possession of this toy last year. Although this is technically true, we failed to truly grasp Chippy von Chisel’s potential in time to save us from last year’s bitter December of tears. But this year… well… this year that little red bastard is working out swimmingly as a key weapon against the ever-seething tiny person rebellion.