Should Winnebago County Ban Elf On A Shelf Like A Georgia County Did?
Santa will have to find a new way to spy on children in Cobb County Georgia this Christmas.
Elf on a Shelf was created in 2005, so I'm too old to have experienced it as a child and I (fortunately, for a lot of people) have no children of my own so everything I know about the tradition is through second hand sourcing.
If you're unfamiliar with the concept, here it is in a nutshell. Your kid gets a small elf doll that gets named something ridiculous. Chilly Willy was an example is was given this morning. The elf "sits" on a shelf and "watches" how your children behave. The elf then "flies" to the North Pole to snitch on your kids to Santa if they were bad. Then the elf returns to your house before the kids wake up and will be watching from a different shelf in the house.
It's just another layer in the complex ruse of lying to your kids around Christmas in order for them to behave. Apparently today's kids don't believe in an omnipresent entity (Santa) judging their behavior from afar, they need to know that there's always a literal eyeball on them to encourage proper behavior.
It all sounds like a pretty big hassle for parents right around the time when people don't have a lot of extra time laying around.
I took a small straw poll of some parents here at work to see if they would support a legal ban of Elf on a Shelf in Winnebago County and it was met with a resounding "YES!"
NOTE: Shannon Zimmerman down at Q98.5 did admit that it is one of the only ways she can get her kids to behave around the holidays. I'm not here to judge.
I have good news for these parents that are tired of hiding an elf doll around their house every Christmas. One county in America is addressing it.
This is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but it probably will give parents around the country solace in the fact that they're not alone in hating Elf on a Shelf, because it seems like pretty much everyone does.
There was obviously an incident in this judge's family life because this bit of the proclamation is pretty funny.
The undersigned recalls a horrific incident in his own home where three children were sent to school in tears, with one child being labeled an "Elf Murderer" and accused of making the elf "lose his magic."
Kids sound like an absolute blast. I can't believe I missed out on that magic.
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