So I was originally going to riff a bit off the very popular “Elf on the Shelf” phenomena, a clever spin on the “Santa’s always watching, kind of like the NSA” motif.

You can read all about it here, but if you don’t want to wander from this page just know that the Elf comes to your house, spies on the kids’ behavior, and reports back to Santa like a good little mole. A sub-culture has developed where the kids will wake up to find the Elf caught in mischievous situations. You can see some of these ideas here, but if you still don’t want to wander just know that they all entail some kind soul staying up late and arranging the Elf into these compromising positions with a Barbie doll and a toaster oven. (Sidebar: thanks to rule 34, I’m going to bet everything I have that somewhere there exists Elf on the Shelf porn. Mind you, I’m not going to try and verify that, because I believe that will slap me right onto the ‘naughty’ list when the Elf reports back to the Big Guy.)

One of the classics is to throw powdered sugar about the Elf in a faux snow situation, which is the point where I checked out. I mean, I’m on record as always being on board for messing with my kids’ heads, especially at Christmas, but I draw the line at making real messes for a fake spy that I’ll have to clean up. That, my friends, is one toke over the crazy line.

But the Elf has become a Christmas tradition for many, and it is a “tradition” that didn’t grow organically out of a Druidic ritual. We all know that The Elf On the Shelf is designed to make money for someone.

I’m a capitalist, so that’s cool. I’m well aware that Rudolph (of the red-nosed reindeer fame) came from the tradition of dreaming up traditions to make money at Christmas. Just like I’m well aware that the Christmas shopping season is a ‘thing’ so retailers can make money off our collective desire to oneupsmanship each other with gifts.

Again, I’m a capitalist, so that’s cool. (There’s a sidebar in there about how our economy is based on buybuybuy and one of these days we’re going to collectively understand that excessive acquisitiveness is probably not so good and those two philosophies are going to collide with predictable, Titanic-style results, but I’ll save that for another day.)

As a capitalist, though, I have to point out that trying to extend the Christmas Buying Season by starting it in freaking July and then whining when retail sales in December are tepid is the stupidest, most counterproductive thing I can imagine. You can have one of those two states of being, folks, but not both.

If shoppers uniformly start squirreling money and gifts away in July, which appears to be what retailers want because the Christmas decorations are showing up earlier and earlier, you’re not going to get a big bang out of sales in December. If you want December to have a big impact, then don’t make with the deckthehalls and whatnots until the night of Thanksgiving.

When I was a kid, I could. not. wait. until December. Christmas was awesome. It was intense. I cried every. single. year. when we took down the tree on New Year’s Day, probably from adrenal fatigue from the month of decorations and cookies and parties and snow and the pile of gifts under the tree and the smell of the fireplace.

But as my parents wisely advised me, Christmas wouldn’t be special if it lasted all year long. You’d get tired of the tree; bored with the cookies; burnt out on the Christmas carols.

I’m hoping that when the Elf on the Shelf comes back to report, retailers, you’ll listen to it. You want us to get all hyped up about shopping at Christmas? Make it special; make it brief; make it intense.

Remember: if Christmas is retail Viagra, any celebration that lasts longer than four hours should be sending us straight to the emergency room.

© E. Stocking Evans 2013