A LETTER TO MY COUSIN WHO IS THINKING ABOUT GETTING AN ELF ON THE SHELF….
NOOOOO……. DO NOT INVITE THE ELVES!!!! You will NEVER forgive yourself for inviting the madness into your home! First you will start with one! You will be forced to think of creative ideas on how to situate the elf for the next morning…every morning…for 25-30 days! Think it through… you will have to get creative during the busiest, most exhausting time of the year!
You will forget to move the damn thing and then at 2 am, you will remember and have to drag yourself out of bed to do it! Or worse you will sleep all night and remember in the morning…but at that point it is too late!!! Your kids are already awake, asking you why the elves are still in the same spot? They will be worried that they have lost their Christmas magic! They will worry that Santa does not know what is happening!!! They will worry all day and ask questions all day! Then the day after when you remember to move them…they will still be wondering why the elves didn’t move the day before??? You will be doing group therapy sessions for your poor kids for days on end!
Then there is the anxiety you feel as you are hiding the elves in their new spot every night. Kid one is a light sleeper, kid two is the pretend sleeper, and if kid three wakes up she will make sure the whole house will wake up too! What if the kids catch you??? What if they are not 100% asleep? What if one is suspicious? What if one has a hidden agenda you don’t know about? WHAT IF YOU ALREADY HID THE ELF IN THIS SAME SPOT THIS YEAR ALREADY?
Did I mention the letter writing….Yeah every time your kids write a letter to the elves, you have to write back! It would be rude not to! Don’t forget the treats you have to leave and eat for yourself…how do you like them calories???
Then if you’re lucky you have that precocious child, that decides to test you and whispers to the elves where she would like for them to be tomorrow. She then comes up to you and tells you that she already told them where to hide tomorrow. You have no one to blame but yourself because you were the one that encouraged them to talk to the damn elves! So now you have to practice having eyes like a hawk and ears like a bat! Oh did I mention this is the same child that used to sleep in but now wakes up at 5 am, because she wants to find the damn elves…not so cute that early in the morning…IS IT?
Don’t even think about traveling for the holidays because you will have to bring the little leech elves along and get creative in a hotel room. Or try to get family to play along and not blow your cover…good luck!
YOU WILL SLOWLY GO CRAZY BECAUSE OF THE ELF!!!
When Christmas is over there will be big crocodile tears for weeks because they had to go back to the North Pole with Santa! What sucks is you have to bring them back the next year because they will worry that Santa did not send their elf back! Then you will need to buy elf #1 a friend, so now you have two elves in your house! It is a perpetual, sick cycle of lies that no one tells you about when you buy the damn elf!!! It does not end there, then they need outfits and accessories!
OH DON’T FORGET THE PETS!!!!! If you buy the damn reindeer…when it is given enough love and you have to send it to the North Pole with the elves where it will help Santa…there will be tears!!! No one tells you about that….when you buy the damn reindeer! So the following year you have to make up a story about how the elves brought a new deer…because when you bought the first deer, it was like signing a contract that you promised Santa you would take care of a deer every year! At this point you are willing to lie to your child even more, just to not have to buy another damn deer! Hopefully you will be lucky and they will buy that cockamamie story too!
Oh and don’t get me started on the damn dog! The dog that you buy for your elf and the book that comes with it tells your kids that if they work really hard, do chores and act responsible the dog will turn into a real dog! Yeah no one tells you that load of baloney when you buy the damn dog! So your poor 10 and 7 year old kids are filled with disappointment every year that the damn dog does not come to life because you stop and ask yourself…”Can I even afford a REAL SAINT BERNARD????”.
MY ADVICE….DON’T INVITE THE ELF!!!!