Day 15: The X-Files: The truth behind the elf on the shelf

I am fed up with being told there is no such thing as normal- there has to be a standard deviation or something that I one day will fall into.  All moms have good days and all moms have bad days but I don't know anyone but me who has my days.

Today I had to tell my boys the truth behind the Elf on the Shelf.

My boys were playing with all the Christmas things I have out: Santa, Reindeer, a Plush Nativitiy scene.  Sometimes they play nicely like telling Santa what they want for Christmas or telling the story of Jesus' birth in the manger.  Sometimes, they make Santa crash his sleigh.  As my older son is playing with these things, he gets "the look."  I hate that look.  I avoid that look.  It means he made a connection and I'm going to have to deal with it later.  He looked at everything around him and then he looked up at our Elf on the Shelf.

(Side bar, I will not participate in the "mommy elf" war. My elf moves if I move her, if she doesn't move, she liked where I put her in the first place-it is not a rocket science-now back to my story...)

Kenneth looked at her and said, "She is just a toy, just like all our toys."

I did what any good mother would do....


 I pretended I didn't hear him.




Lunch time, it was not brought up again.

Thank you powers that be, I can avoid that a little while longer...

Then it was time to go to school-if only the drive to Madison were a little bit shorter......he brought it up again.

"Seriously, Mom....the elves are just toys and the whole thing is a joke."

"Honey, no, it's part of the magic...they have to look like toys or people would freak out."

"Why can't they just be normal?  We could handle a live elf sitting on a shelf."  Yeah, we probably could. God knows we can handle anything.

"Kenneth, if  there were a bunch of live elves going around, people would freak and the government would take them like an X-File."

"The what files?"


Oh no I didn't...

Before there was Harry Potter, there was the X-Files. I watched that show religiously: Freshman year of college on Friday nights before they moved it to Sundays.  I watched it in Spain dubbed in Spanish.  I told my grandmother during a weekend visit that I was going to watch the X-Files on the small television in the living room behind the piano while she and Grandaddy watched the Braves game on their big screen in the den.  She brought me Pringles!

I loved Dana Scully and Fox Mulder.....what color was her hair again? That's right, red.. don't forget it...My first year teaching my classroom was covered in X-Files posters and I still  have a huge X-Files coffee mug.

How do you explain the X-Files to a six year old without looking like a loony tune?

"Well, the X-Files..were...special agents...kind of like Inspector Gadget or Special Agent Oso....and if we called them and said...we have a live elf in our house, they..um, come and check to make sure we are telling the truth...and if we are telling the truth, the government might take the elves to learn more about them, so to keep this from happening, the elves have to look like all the other toys."

"ARE YOU SERIOUS???? YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT THIS SHOW EVER!!!!!"

He and I have an agreement-on his thirteenth birthday he can watch the cockroach episode with me.  Until then he can live through his mommie's memories of one of the best shows ever....


Nothing, and I mean nothing, would be a better Christmas gift to me than having Mulder and Scully knock on my door in this small New England town to investigate reports of elves running around tattling to Santa Claus....

Maybe I am cheating my kids because I don't spend hours at craft stores searching for fabrics to make clothes for our elf.

Call the FBI on me....