Elf on the Shelf

Mr. Los Angeles and I do not on the whole do Christmas decorations. We do the other parts of Christmas with vim and vigor: we see friends, make merry, and on Christmas day host a raucous and ramshackle dinner of turkey and ham and whatever anyone else feels like bringing which seems to keep people happy until they tip out into the night and another Christmas is over for the year. But somehow, for us, the decorations just don’t seem to happen.

Photo by 🪷 🍄 on Unsplash

One reason is the issue of space. You might think it something of an achievement for just the two people to have filled 1,746 square feet of house with so much assorted clutter that it is physically impossible to fit in a Christmas tree; it is a challenge to which Mr. Los Angeles and I have risen. Any smaller decorations are haphazard. Some years, when I have remembered, I will have dug from the garden shed an 18-inch wooden Christmas tree which I will place between the speakers we keep meaning to replace on top of the music center we keep meaning to modernize; occasionally we go for broke and place three gold-painted pine cones on the coffee table for a festive touch of glitter; we also have a couple of really quite pretty Renaissance-style angels that are supposed to be attached to the branches of the Christmas tree that we don’t have, which have been sitting behind the photographs on the console ever since we forgot to put them away last Christmas, and, now that I think about it, can be brought forward to seasonal prominence again. But aside from that, a bowl of gaudily wrapped Quality Street chocolates because you kind of have to, and a couple of jugs of pine leaves for a festive smell, the most you will experience of Christmas in our house will be the seasonally rubicund cheeks and brightly welcoming smiles on the faces of your host and hostess.

There is just the one exception however. Each year Mr. Los Angeles will insist on extracting from its hiding place a bauble he remembers with unalloyed fondness from his younger years called the elf on the shelf, which he will place, with ceremony, at the meticulously measured golden intersection of the second shelf down of the taller bookshelf, directly in most adults’ eyeline.

I do not like the elf on the shelf. It is a long, skinny rag doll that perches pertly on the edge of the bookshelf, its back most firmly turned towards the reading material and any new ideas that might be contained therein, its endless red-clad legs dangling jauntily in the air, its face abeam with a level of self-satisfaction whose justification remains shrouded in mystery. Dating from probably the 1970s, it has a knowing little grin under a perkily pointed red cap, eyes bright with impermeable good cheer, and the general air of those aggressively Caucasian, relentlessly heteronormative young people in old-style Christmas TV specials who would troop across the screen wearing adorably chunky sweaters, their cheeks healthily flushed from walking in a winter wonderland, their scrawny fingers wrapped comfy cozily around mugs of wholesome hot chocolate, strangers all to self-question and hangovers alike.

The elf on the shelf – Chip, as I like to think of him, that being a suitably Delta Kappa Epsilon sort of name – is apparently one of Santa’s elves. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the idea of Santa’s elves; to tell the truth, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the idea of the American Santa himself, with his prissy naughty and nice lists, his pettily punitive lumps of coal for those who don’t pass muster, and his flat-out disturbing team of brain-washed elf acolytes, diligently working the year around in a factory in the snow when they should by all elven rights be out frolicking in a grassy woodland and playing tricks on humans instead. We didn’t have Santa Claus when I was growing up in England: we had Father Christmas, a benignly non-judgmental figure, who gave toys to naughty and nice children alike, and had made them himself, too, on the spot, out of good old-fashioned Christmas magic just like they should be made. Santa and his elves are not my cup of eggnog at all.

Nevertheless, a couple of years ago, I decided to try to get to know Chip a little better. He was part of Mr. Los Angeles’ childhood after all, I told myself, part of his family in many ways, and as such I really should try to draw him out a little, find out who he was and what made him tick. It was a common theme in those Christmas specials that two characters who at first didn’t hit it off would somehow fall to talking and discover they had common ground: who knew but that Chip and I might even end up sharing confidences over a mug of steaming hot chocolate while Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas played softly in the background? So I dug around in Chip’s background, and here is what I have discovered.

Chip, it transpires, is not just any old elf but a special variety called a Scout Elf. According to the official Elf on the Shelf Tradition – Chip as a decoration is far from new, but in 2005 he was awarded a whole back story of his own in a book published by Carol V. Aebersold and Chanda Bell – he is part of a batch of elves sent by Santa to family homes across America with specific instructions to sit on the shelf and watch the household goings on; he will be taking notes during the day, and by night, when everyone is tucked safe and asleep in their beds, off he will fly to meet Santa in the North Pole – I can see the little ratbag now, zooming horizontally in the wind, his merry red cap streaming behind him, his dear little eyes sparkling with malicious glee – and report to Head Office on who has that day been naughty and who has that day been nice.

To sum up: ol’ Chip is a spy.

Now that Chip’s little secret is out, the gloves are off between us. I stand regularly in front of him where he sits on the shelf with his sly smirk and his back to the books, and taunt him with ill behavior. I pull ugly faces and use rude words. I call him Boogerface and Santa Mr. Poopypants. I show him parking tickets and overdue library books. I double dip in the hummus before the guests arrive. I tell him about the time when …

“Are you OK in there?” asked Mr. Los Angeles, happening to enter one afternoon unawares.

“Fine,” I said, firmly. “Just having a quiet chat with my friend the elf here.”

“I think you might need to get out of the house a little more,” said Mr. Los Angeles.

This post will be my last of 2025. We have a large and rowdy Christmas coming up, and Mr. Los Angeles and I plan to spend the remainder of the year sitting in glazed-eyed stupor on the sofa, gorging on delicious leftovers (lookin’ at you, Meredith’s chocolate cheesecake) and doing as little as humanly possible of anything at all. Happy holidays to all of you, many thanks for helping to make this blog such a joy to write, and I’ll see you in 2026!