Elf on shelf!
- Thread starter BenBhoy
- Start date
BenBhoy
Well-Known Member
Each to own mate. I've always loved Christmas. Grew up as a kid where Christmas was very special & me and Mrs try to make it a magic time for our kids. Not necessarily in terms of spending loads on shitê presents, but in bringing joy & excitement. Every year the elves write a little welcome poem (I've just finished it!!) Then each night do something cheeky (usually at my expense!) The kids love that, like they're in on a joke with the elves. In a world of so much doom & gloom, it's beautiful to get the chance to be part of seeing the belief of kids in something magic.
Christmas - i bloody love it!!
Not a big fan
K
K
Rake Aboot
Well-Known Member
Love it, Cannae wait . Got a dozen coming for dinner
Ingenious marketing. Wish I had thought of it
I love Christmas, just to see the joy on the kiddies faces. It's great to see the Xmas magic at work. I'd love to be a kid again and get genuinely excited about stuff like they do.
I spent many years determined to hate Christmas and everything to do with it.
Fortunately, my wife embraces it wholeheartedly, in all its tinsel festooned cheesiness. She and my son have managed to convince me to stop being a miserable c*nt.
I do, however, draw the line at the elf… instead, we do a family scale advent calendar. Door height home stitched thing with 25 pockets. Each of us gets 8 pockets. The other two team up to come up with things to put in the pockets (ie. Wife and son come up with what goes in mine, my son and I come up with what goes in my wife’s etc). Tends to be a mix of edibles (chocolate etc), thoughtful consumables (I get a lot of little packets of fishing flies) and ‘jokes’. Genuinely fun to take 3 minutes each morning before rushing out of the house.
The only down side to Christmas is relatives coming to visit…
Fortunately, my wife embraces it wholeheartedly, in all its tinsel festooned cheesiness. She and my son have managed to convince me to stop being a miserable c*nt.
I do, however, draw the line at the elf… instead, we do a family scale advent calendar. Door height home stitched thing with 25 pockets. Each of us gets 8 pockets. The other two team up to come up with things to put in the pockets (ie. Wife and son come up with what goes in mine, my son and I come up with what goes in my wife’s etc). Tends to be a mix of edibles (chocolate etc), thoughtful consumables (I get a lot of little packets of fishing flies) and ‘jokes’. Genuinely fun to take 3 minutes each morning before rushing out of the house.
The only down side to Christmas is relatives coming to visit…
I delivered a fallow haunch to my favourite farmer that will be his Christmas dinner and I’m well into my Christmas preparations. I love it more for others than for me, but I’m happy to go along with it - at a distance from the schmalz and tat in Christmas markets. Like SD, I love the silence of early Christmas morning, before anyone else is up.
In truth there are certain aspects of the run up to the 25th I enjoy but at the risk of a charge of self-righteousness, these are significantly overshadowed by the rapacious nation-wide need to 'consume' in an oft' painfully covetous manner. Something that, IMHO, runs contrary to the underlying message and spirit of Christmas.
K
K
I’m a pagan really; I love the festival of light. Marking the shortest day of the year (or slightly after it) with a feast is deep rooted in our culture. Traditionally, a cull excess livestock that couldn’t be overwintered on the thin pastures of these Northern European lands. Christian Christmas adds another layer to the midwinter festival, just as it overlays older traditions at Ēostre, and now we’ve added further modern customs on top: Elf on the Shelf in all. Whilst my household does not partake, I enjoy seeing the effort and enjoyment that families get from this.
As a final thought, I love the British climate in December, and with seasonal lag in mind I’d actually suggest moving the secular celebrations into mid-January to brighten the hardest month. Even though it would break the connection to midwinter’s night.
As a final thought, I love the British climate in December, and with seasonal lag in mind I’d actually suggest moving the secular celebrations into mid-January to brighten the hardest month. Even though it would break the connection to midwinter’s night.
Love it, but the some of the magic has gone with our girls grown up.
When I was young the tree was real.
Decorated with apples, sweets and walnuts wrapped in gold/silver foil, the day I finished school for the hols.
We even had real candles on it although only lit for a brief period each day.
When our girls were small, Mrs LE would get them to brushes their teeth before bed. Whilst I nipped outside with one of their toys that had bells and jingle the bells.
Mrs LE would say “Hear that? That’s Santa getting ready to start his toy run so you better get to bed”
She said the look on their faces was worth any hassles of the previous 12 months.
Don’t particularly like Elf on the Shelf though.
When I was young the tree was real.
Decorated with apples, sweets and walnuts wrapped in gold/silver foil, the day I finished school for the hols.
We even had real candles on it although only lit for a brief period each day.
When our girls were small, Mrs LE would get them to brushes their teeth before bed. Whilst I nipped outside with one of their toys that had bells and jingle the bells.
Mrs LE would say “Hear that? That’s Santa getting ready to start his toy run so you better get to bed”
She said the look on their faces was worth any hassles of the previous 12 months.
Don’t particularly like Elf on the Shelf though.
So I used to get extremely grumpy about the naked consumerism and greed.
But then I realised that it is what you make of it. What others do is up to them.
That cheered me up.
But it probably helps that I’m an atheist, so I don’t have any connection to the religious components. It’s a mid winter festival for me, and seen that way, it’s a lot easier to just enjoy.
Bizarrely, because I grew up in the absolute middle of nowhere, in the tropics, with atheist parents, I (a) had no exposure to the Christian part of it until I went to school, and (b) strongly associated the time of year with extreme heat, sticky humidity and frequent torrential downpours.
My mother is American, and was absolutely determined to recreate a ‘traditional’ Mid West Christmas experience in the middle of a remote African national park. Somehow, every year she managed to get hold of an actual Christmas tree and a genuine turkey. This usually involved several months of planning, and a relay of vehicles over 1000 miles of dirt roads with an increasingly bedraggled pine tree strapped to the roof. I only ever remember one year when she failed - in Botswana, where the nearest conifers were probably at least a three day drive away. Decorating an acacia turns out to be quite challenging…
Partake in Elf on the Shelf!
You just have to embrace it. kids are only kids for a little while and the magic is soon lost, so why not make it as memorable for them as possible!!
Mine still laugh at me when they remember how Eddie the elf drew glasses on my face in permanent marker pen!!
its the memories!!
Mine still laugh at me when they remember how Eddie the elf drew glasses on my face in permanent marker pen!!
its the memories!!
BenBhoy
Well-Known Member
I remember Xmas 1972, under the tree wrapped up 12 hemp purse nets, later on taken in the shed a little white jill in a cage Dad had made on the QT
Boxing day off out with him caught 1 rabbit but that didn't matter as we got one.
Phil fox man
Well-Known Member
for the past 30 odd years we've always gone foxing on Christmas eve, probably only missed a couple of times over the years.
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