AIBU to have never heard of Elf on a Shelf before?

[whatsthatcomingoverthehill]

I'm 30-something and this is the first Christmas I can remember where people are going on about some bloody elf. Suddenly seems all over facebook, people complaining about not being able to get one etc etc. Where has this come from? I'm guessing some kind of american import. And what even is it?

We don't do Elf on the Shelf as it sounds like far too much hard work.
But my mum has a stuffed deer's head on her wall (taxidermy) and we tell the children that its a spy for Santa and reports back to tell him if they are naughty or nice.

I was a bit sceptical about it and the proper elves are a bit scary. We have a 99p card factory soft elf though and DD, who is 3, absolutely loves it! He doesn't do stuff every night, but when he does she is so excited about it and it's really worth it. I haven't made a big thing out of him reporting to Santa though, but she thinks he brought the advent calenders and he will probably bring the decorations and leave a Christmas Eve present.

apocalypse i once made a gimp mask out of a balloon for the mr whiplash bowling pin i made my sister... keyrings make good handcuffs and a frayed straw makes a bloody good whip...

I also only heard about it this year, also on MN. Maybe it was a covert MN strategy to sell us all elves with spy cameras to get material for their next Secret Lives of MNetters book.

Thank you Szell. Every day's a school day on MN

I loved the idea of Elf on the Shelf when I first heard about it (DD1 was about 18mo) thought we would wait until she was 3/4 to start it. By the time she was 3/4 I had realised this Elf was one step too far (for me).

Don't get me wrong I love Christmas, but we already do: two calendars, decorating, two trees (fake and real), gingerbread house making, santa visiting, crafts, baking, Christmas card writing, wrapping presents, Christmas concerts etc and plenty of other days out all in the run up to Christmas so we DO NOT NEED another Christmas tradition we are overwhelmed with tradition already!

Also lets face it after a couple of years the parents are going to really wish they hadn't started this tradition (too much effort)! But each to their own!

Can I pre-order an Imp in a Gimp?

How the actual fuck can you be a member of Mumsnet and never have heard of Elf On The Shelf?

There are countless threads droning on about it from September onwards.

I've just done an advanced search and there are 21 threads in the past month with Elf On The Shelf in the thread title alone!

Oddboots Dh wants to know what the tradition with 12 Christmas robins is?

Never heard of it.

Elf is a creepy little fucker. We had the pleasure of living under the Heathrow flight path when DD was little. As the planes turned you could see a row of lights with a red one at one end. I had DD utterly convinced that this was Santa flying around checking 'look! you can even see Rudolph'. She insisted on going to bed with her curtains open so Santa could see she was being good :o

I'm 38 and first heard about it this morning on MN.

Shellby - Oddboots already explained about the 12 robins in her post at 15:19 earlier today.

What a load of commercial bollocks, £25 pounds for a blooming elf . Thank god only 1 person on my FB is doing it.

I never heard about it before this year, and it was here I read about it.
I think it could be counter productive, our elf even though dd is 10 is a helpful elf.
Every night he does something helpful (dd)
Then he leaves or does something funny.

Tonight she tidied room for 10 mins, tomorrow she will find him playing her saxophone.

Ah yes shadow thanks I see now!

I think it's significant that Elf On The Shelf is a similar age as Facebook and has seriously mushroomed since Pinterest.

At this time of year, with a house, job, 3 children and a husband beefing gently encouraged, I can barely remember my name never mind thinking of something witty to do every night when the children seem to fall asleep about 5 minutes before me

Quite agree that it isn't exactly the season of the year when anyone needs anything extra to do.

I suspect this is beginning to dawn on some of the previously enthusiastic owners of these elven snitches since things have been getting a tad indolent and their elves are clearly not Doing Their Bit.

For the first week, all sorts of "hilarious" morning activities were plastered all over observed on Facebook. How we laughed to see the umpteen pictures of an elf hanging on the bathroom door handle. Or pretending to play the piano. Or peeping, snitchily, over the edge of the washing basket. But no longer. In fact, whole days have passed without even a glimpse of these idle little bastards. Anyone would think that the novelty has worn off...

Only heard about it on here. It hasn't caught on in Ireland yet. Sounds creepy and silly to me.

Have you seen these Elves, Coco?

Only a simple image search on Google would provide all the evidence required.

Fuck. Its a 'magners'

Never heard of it, sounds like American crap designed to sell elves.

More bollocks from the US. 'Tradition', ha!