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This article reads very much like marketing material for a single product. Several of the edits to this article, both by a user called Elfontheshelf and others, seem designed to create a sort of fake "tradition", presumably to support the book and tie-in products mentioned in the article. Whilst there are certainly traditions of the general form "Santa Claus is watching you" in the run-up to Christmas, we need some clear evidence that the particular story told in this book has historical roots; otherwise, this is just another book (and related products) cashing in on a holiday season, and we should describe it as such. RomanSpa ( talk) 10:07, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
You explain to me how there's no connection between a bogeyman who is "used by adults to frighten children into compliant behaviour" and an elf whose job it is "to keep watch over the children's behavior during the day and return to the North Pole overnight to report their behavior" in order "to ensure that they behave properly throughout the holidays." 67.171.210.88 ( talk) 00:49, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I took out the bit about the old 1960s elf from a blog. It was just someone's blogspot site, hardly an RS. If someone can find a better source perhaps we can put it back in. Dbrodbeck ( talk) 02:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
My 1950s Elf .. I have an Elf on the Shelf that my mother got in the 1950's. It comes out every Christmas and goes on my wall clock. It was a favorite of my brother who drowned on New Years Day in 1963.
In our post-Snowden age, should we really be teaching kids to voluntarily encourage active spys into their homes? Creepy! I'm surprised the article doesn't already have references to this moral quandary, if you know of references which qualify for wikipedia's acceptable sources - please contribute them into the article. It is much needed. Roidroid ( talk) 05:00, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
This reads like a promo for the recent book. What about the longer history of the idea? I remember having these creepy things sitting around the house at Christmas time when I was growing up in the late 1960s / early 1970s, long before this book which which allegedly invented the idea. Our Elf-on-shelf had no NSA-like back story about spying, it just sat around the house on shelves, on the TV, on the kitchen cabinets; moving around from time to time. Everyone thought they were generally creepy but we kept hauling it back out every year. Perhaps someone can track down who made them or what they were originally called? Steevithak ( talk) 12:48, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
It is startling that the hit song from 1934 (now traditional) "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" is not mentioned, which contains the root idea predating the Elf On The Shelf, although the song didn't mention a creepy snitching elf. It was a good-humoured song, to be taken lightly. The Elf the Spy business is a modern innovation that is certainly not traditional. And I don't get the indignation about the mean, bratty kid getting a lump of coal. He deserves it. Song lyrics:
"You better watch out You better not cry Better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town
He's making a list And checking it twice; Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good So be good for goodness sake! O! You better watch out! You better not cry Better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town" 77Mike77 ( talk) 01:11, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
Two things right off the bat:
1) I am a software engineer that works for Elf on the Shelf. As such I do not want to make any edits to the primary article due to conflict of interest. At the same time I'm also not posting this under official capacity either, so don't consider me a mouthpiece of the company (although I admit that I will probably be biased) 2) I am a total wikipedia n00b... so please don't flame me if I'm out of line... educate me :) . I'm all ears (eyes?)
Now that I have that out of the way, there are some changes I would like to suggest to any editors interested in updating this wiki page:
a) We launched a Reindeer plushy toy last year (2014) along with a corresponding book. It has been pretty successful thus far... enough so to probably merit a mention on this page (similar to the Birthday product etc). I tried to keep the copy neutral... I may or may not have achieved that: • Another new book followed in 2014 called Elf Pets®: A Reindeer Tradition. Similar to The Elf on the Shelf box set, each Elf Pets box set comes with a hardbound children’s book and a reindeer pet that children can play with. According to the story, children can adopt their own reindeer pet to create the Christmas magic that Santa needs to fly his sleigh on Christmas Eve.
Source: http://parenting.blog.ajc.com/2014/11/14/the-elf-on-the-shelf-now-has-reindeer-pet/
b) The toy is not considered a "soft toy", it's just considered a "doll" (see the opening paragraph). Not to get in to too much detail, but since it's not designed to be touched by the child, it's not really a toy (although I suppose that might be semantics) c) Someone should consider creating an awards section... it's accumulated a ton of them: http://www.ccaandb.com/awards ... I'm happy to hunt down sources for any of them upon request.
Alrighty - I figured that's a good place to start.
Calebrhurd ( talk) 18:21, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
I know this story goes back to the early 1960's at least, and is not just from a recent book. I personally first heard this story from my mother-in-law in 1984, when my then husband and I moved nearby. Our first Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family, our children were about 2 and 4 years old, this was part of a family tradition I was now introduced to at that time. In fact, she actually gave us her family "elf", if I remember correctly, it wasn't called an elf, it was called a tumton (I don't know if that spelling is right). I may be wrong and it may be that she had just named it Tumton - but I simply can't remember for sure. Anyway, she and my husband explained that this was their family Christmas tradition for the kids and told me this same story. The tumton comes from Santa and appears after Thanksgiving, somewhere visible, preferably in the livingroom area of the house. Then each day it would mysteriously move to a new location in the general living area of the house, up high, where the kids couldn't reach it. This would continue until Christmas Eve when it would disappear to go back to the North Pole and tell Santa how the children had behaved. We, and the kids, had fun with this for years, though I don't think we really fooled the kids for very long. I don't remember if my mother in law credited where this tradition came from. She was originally from Southwestern Iowa, and I don't recall her specific heritage, if I ever even knew it. Unfortunately she has passed on to be the Lord and I do not have any contacts within her family. Hopefully this telling will spark someone else's memory.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Oldcruzer ( talk • contribs)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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Robert leath ( talk) 21:27, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
The Elf on a Shelf was started by Carolyn Leath of Springfield,Ohio for her children in 1965. She placed 3 elves on the fireplace mantle. She told her children that they were Santa's Elves keeping an eye on them. Several years later, as she was babysitting children, she continued using Elf on a Shelf to keep the children to be good at Christmas time. The Parents of the children saw how effective it was and started doing the same thing at home to keep the children good at home.
One recent episode of Saturday Night Live shows Putin giving an Elf on the Shelf, which is obviously rigged with espionage equipment, to Trump and asks him to leave it on the fireplace mantle all year, next to the internet router. This relates to the ongoing discussion on russian hacking and influencing of the U.S. presidential elections, and is even better understood considering the context of the Elf on the Shelf book. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ar80sFzViw - if anyone likes, please insert into the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.158.138.21 ( talk) 13:54, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
The Elf on the Shelf balloon had a last flight in the 2018 parade. 7 Appearances of The Elf on the Shelf balloon in the parade. He retired in 2018. He is retired in the 2018 Macy's Parade.
Without the actual history of the toy being mentioned, this reads as an advertisement and is not in keeping with wiki standards. 63.131.162.130 ( talk) 13:55, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi! I added the meme section, and included a subsection for it, styled like this:
Another suggested styling is to bold the normal text without formatting as a header, like this:
"You've heard of" meme
For what it's worth, I suggested the subsection approach because
Revirvlkodlaku, since I think you disagree and prefer the latter styling, and suggested a Talk page topic, I would value your perspective. :)
Mxbndr ( talk) 19:46, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Revirvlkodlaku ( talk) 20:23, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article reads very much like marketing material for a single product. Several of the edits to this article, both by a user called Elfontheshelf and others, seem designed to create a sort of fake "tradition", presumably to support the book and tie-in products mentioned in the article. Whilst there are certainly traditions of the general form "Santa Claus is watching you" in the run-up to Christmas, we need some clear evidence that the particular story told in this book has historical roots; otherwise, this is just another book (and related products) cashing in on a holiday season, and we should describe it as such. RomanSpa ( talk) 10:07, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
You explain to me how there's no connection between a bogeyman who is "used by adults to frighten children into compliant behaviour" and an elf whose job it is "to keep watch over the children's behavior during the day and return to the North Pole overnight to report their behavior" in order "to ensure that they behave properly throughout the holidays." 67.171.210.88 ( talk) 00:49, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I took out the bit about the old 1960s elf from a blog. It was just someone's blogspot site, hardly an RS. If someone can find a better source perhaps we can put it back in. Dbrodbeck ( talk) 02:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
My 1950s Elf .. I have an Elf on the Shelf that my mother got in the 1950's. It comes out every Christmas and goes on my wall clock. It was a favorite of my brother who drowned on New Years Day in 1963.
In our post-Snowden age, should we really be teaching kids to voluntarily encourage active spys into their homes? Creepy! I'm surprised the article doesn't already have references to this moral quandary, if you know of references which qualify for wikipedia's acceptable sources - please contribute them into the article. It is much needed. Roidroid ( talk) 05:00, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
This reads like a promo for the recent book. What about the longer history of the idea? I remember having these creepy things sitting around the house at Christmas time when I was growing up in the late 1960s / early 1970s, long before this book which which allegedly invented the idea. Our Elf-on-shelf had no NSA-like back story about spying, it just sat around the house on shelves, on the TV, on the kitchen cabinets; moving around from time to time. Everyone thought they were generally creepy but we kept hauling it back out every year. Perhaps someone can track down who made them or what they were originally called? Steevithak ( talk) 12:48, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
It is startling that the hit song from 1934 (now traditional) "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" is not mentioned, which contains the root idea predating the Elf On The Shelf, although the song didn't mention a creepy snitching elf. It was a good-humoured song, to be taken lightly. The Elf the Spy business is a modern innovation that is certainly not traditional. And I don't get the indignation about the mean, bratty kid getting a lump of coal. He deserves it. Song lyrics:
"You better watch out You better not cry Better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town
He's making a list And checking it twice; Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good So be good for goodness sake! O! You better watch out! You better not cry Better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town" 77Mike77 ( talk) 01:11, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
Two things right off the bat:
1) I am a software engineer that works for Elf on the Shelf. As such I do not want to make any edits to the primary article due to conflict of interest. At the same time I'm also not posting this under official capacity either, so don't consider me a mouthpiece of the company (although I admit that I will probably be biased) 2) I am a total wikipedia n00b... so please don't flame me if I'm out of line... educate me :) . I'm all ears (eyes?)
Now that I have that out of the way, there are some changes I would like to suggest to any editors interested in updating this wiki page:
a) We launched a Reindeer plushy toy last year (2014) along with a corresponding book. It has been pretty successful thus far... enough so to probably merit a mention on this page (similar to the Birthday product etc). I tried to keep the copy neutral... I may or may not have achieved that: • Another new book followed in 2014 called Elf Pets®: A Reindeer Tradition. Similar to The Elf on the Shelf box set, each Elf Pets box set comes with a hardbound children’s book and a reindeer pet that children can play with. According to the story, children can adopt their own reindeer pet to create the Christmas magic that Santa needs to fly his sleigh on Christmas Eve.
Source: http://parenting.blog.ajc.com/2014/11/14/the-elf-on-the-shelf-now-has-reindeer-pet/
b) The toy is not considered a "soft toy", it's just considered a "doll" (see the opening paragraph). Not to get in to too much detail, but since it's not designed to be touched by the child, it's not really a toy (although I suppose that might be semantics) c) Someone should consider creating an awards section... it's accumulated a ton of them: http://www.ccaandb.com/awards ... I'm happy to hunt down sources for any of them upon request.
Alrighty - I figured that's a good place to start.
Calebrhurd ( talk) 18:21, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
I know this story goes back to the early 1960's at least, and is not just from a recent book. I personally first heard this story from my mother-in-law in 1984, when my then husband and I moved nearby. Our first Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family, our children were about 2 and 4 years old, this was part of a family tradition I was now introduced to at that time. In fact, she actually gave us her family "elf", if I remember correctly, it wasn't called an elf, it was called a tumton (I don't know if that spelling is right). I may be wrong and it may be that she had just named it Tumton - but I simply can't remember for sure. Anyway, she and my husband explained that this was their family Christmas tradition for the kids and told me this same story. The tumton comes from Santa and appears after Thanksgiving, somewhere visible, preferably in the livingroom area of the house. Then each day it would mysteriously move to a new location in the general living area of the house, up high, where the kids couldn't reach it. This would continue until Christmas Eve when it would disappear to go back to the North Pole and tell Santa how the children had behaved. We, and the kids, had fun with this for years, though I don't think we really fooled the kids for very long. I don't remember if my mother in law credited where this tradition came from. She was originally from Southwestern Iowa, and I don't recall her specific heritage, if I ever even knew it. Unfortunately she has passed on to be the Lord and I do not have any contacts within her family. Hopefully this telling will spark someone else's memory.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Oldcruzer ( talk • contribs)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on
The Elf on the Shelf. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If necessary, add {{
cbignore}}
after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{
nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 18 January 2022).
Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 05:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Robert leath ( talk) 21:27, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
The Elf on a Shelf was started by Carolyn Leath of Springfield,Ohio for her children in 1965. She placed 3 elves on the fireplace mantle. She told her children that they were Santa's Elves keeping an eye on them. Several years later, as she was babysitting children, she continued using Elf on a Shelf to keep the children to be good at Christmas time. The Parents of the children saw how effective it was and started doing the same thing at home to keep the children good at home.
One recent episode of Saturday Night Live shows Putin giving an Elf on the Shelf, which is obviously rigged with espionage equipment, to Trump and asks him to leave it on the fireplace mantle all year, next to the internet router. This relates to the ongoing discussion on russian hacking and influencing of the U.S. presidential elections, and is even better understood considering the context of the Elf on the Shelf book. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ar80sFzViw - if anyone likes, please insert into the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.158.138.21 ( talk) 13:54, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
The Elf on the Shelf balloon had a last flight in the 2018 parade. 7 Appearances of The Elf on the Shelf balloon in the parade. He retired in 2018. He is retired in the 2018 Macy's Parade.
Without the actual history of the toy being mentioned, this reads as an advertisement and is not in keeping with wiki standards. 63.131.162.130 ( talk) 13:55, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi! I added the meme section, and included a subsection for it, styled like this:
Another suggested styling is to bold the normal text without formatting as a header, like this:
"You've heard of" meme
For what it's worth, I suggested the subsection approach because
Revirvlkodlaku, since I think you disagree and prefer the latter styling, and suggested a Talk page topic, I would value your perspective. :)
Mxbndr ( talk) 19:46, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Revirvlkodlaku ( talk) 20:23, 15 December 2023 (UTC)