Stop Hating my Elf on the Shelf

There is an Elf on the Shelf in my household, and for some reason that draws criticism.

                Last year was our first year being visited by Russel, and his evening activities range from Lego prisons to marshmallow snowball fights to tormenting our betta fish Seamus to chandelier yarn bungee jumps with the cast of Toy Story. Russel adds a lot of fun to a chaotic time of year.

                It’s a fairly recent trend, this—it’s the fact that it’s a trend that I think is the real source of its ridicule—where your children are visited daily by a red elf who then goes to the North Pole every evening to report on the behaviour witnessed. A way of further shoring up the Nice list, I suppose.

The initial idea was kids would search the house for the tricky elf, but more and more the elves are setting themselves up in elaborate, Pinterest-inspired action scenes.

I’ve noticed a lot of bad-mouthing the Elves on Shelves this year. There are parents who find it a chore, and parents who find that smug little face just a touch too creepy. Fine and good, you don’t have to do it. We don’t have a nativity scene . . .

But it’s getting out of hand. There are articles everywhere you look decrying the Elf as promoting Big Brother totalitarianism (http://www.canadianliving.com/moms/blog/editors-desk/the-elf-on-the-shelf-is-creepy-and-possibly-promoting-a-totalitarian-regime), and academics coming out on reputable news shows (http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/12/22/elf-on-the-shelf-normalizes-surveillance-state-for-kids-says-academic/) telling us that the Elf is “normalizing surveillance,” and thus traumatic to our children. The long-term psychological damage can only be guessed at!

Take a step back and give your heads a shake. It’s a magic toy.

This, this is the Christmas tradition that bothers you? A playful elf that tells your kids, “Hey, be good, I’ve got a direct line to the big man”?

Seriously, this is a concern?

We’re talking about a holiday of Celtic/Norse/Saxon origin that was commandeered by Christianity and then commandeered by Coke, and this is what bothers you? This?

This bothers you, on a holiday based around the human form of a deity born to a virgin in a stable causing great fanfare and royal visits because one day his claim to fame would be getting brutally executed?

                A holiday where a supersonic overweight geriatric commits millions of break and enters while scarfing pastries and possibly making out with your mom?

                A holiday that causes you to nail tube socks up next to gas fire places?

                A holiday where millions of perfectly good fir trees are annually hacked down, shoved inside, whored up as fire hazards, loved dearly for three weeks, then hucked out the door?

                A holiday that sees energy costs quadruple as neighbours try to outdo each other with outside lighting visible from space in an orgy of un-Christmasy competition?

                A holiday that sees consumers dive deeply into debt just to stuff electronics into said tube socks?

                A holiday where god help you and call your lawyer and prepare for assault charges if your kid wants the latest battery-powered fluffy toy?

                A holiday where we insist on buying people we don’t really like things they don’t really need in the hopes of achieving that one moment of eye-opening bliss when we are briefly acknowledged for not screwing up?

                This, this is what worries you on our most incomprehensible and idiotic of holidays: a stuffed elf?

                Maybe we should just admit that it’s a growing trend and the only thing more certain than a growing trend is hipsters and pseudo-intellects picking it apart. Because we wouldn’t want something innocent and fun to be just that for the very few years we can enjoy it with our children.

                No, wouldn’t want something fun to happen at Christmas, no sir.

                

Man Up: Tyler Durden 2014

For Arjay and Kev

     

Idol of the Inferior

Many men my age assess ourselves based on Fight Club. Not the book, the film. The book did its part but it was the movie that truly decided us for who we are as a generation. Or maybe just who we were, because the assessment has changed. 

                There are two sets of us now, we men who survived the non-war of the 1990s, that less than forgotten time: a period of brief bliss when our heroes were gangsters and our priests wore black ties, that period of ever so unbelievable peace yet war, hope yet genocide, progress yet status quo, between the Cold War and 9/11. To think about it recklessly you run the risk of painting it as a fiary tale it wasn't. But, hey, the music was pretty good. 

                We are two kinds of men. We tell ourselves the truth: we’re the unimportant unnamed narrator. Our other self is Tyler Durden. Naturally, Tyler is a superhuman. He’s the dad who left, he’s the man we adore and wish we were, he’s the us we wish we were if we could be who we are without all of these mortal trappings.              

                In 1999 he was the volatile hippy because we perhaps didn’t understand what he would be when we let ourselves open to the fascism that is the 21^stCentury. It’s not Tyler’s fault. He was created during a time when we needed something to be angry about and fight against because we couldn’t accept that life was possibly so damned good when we still had dads. So we made them leave even if it was just to upstairs.

                Men our age have gone one of these two ways, and there are a whole damn lot of them who think that they’re Tyler because they think he’s what a man should be. Tough, virile, uncompromising. A Man’s man. Well, there is a reason that when they’re on the bus looking at the underwear ad the unnamed narrator asks if that’s “what a real man looks like.” Because Tyler isn’t one. A real man is one who asks himself what he is, and daily doubts he is one. 

                These new men have convinced themselves that they are Tyler. They've missed the point, missed that he's a conception of grandeur, and archetype. Literally a figment of the imagination. These men have so deluded themselves that they could be this grand dream--and forgetting that it was a nightmare in the first place--that they believe their own lies. 

                Today, men are men because they reach further back to some uncompromising John Wayne, Johnny Cash wannabe sense of self. They define themselves by tobacco, whiskey, misogyny. Oil, money, and enjoying having no vulnerability. Let's not confuse that with a lack of weakness, though. 

               Who it means to be the man on the other side of Tyler Durden is too frightening so they have taken a gigantic, deliberate, pathetic step backwards.

                The man I am is the man I am now, not then. We are men because we move on, because we survive after the revelation, we don't pull the curtain back after the secret's revealed, pretending we never learned the truth.
                Man up.