December has arrived with decorations, advent calendars and Alistair Sim
By Mark Schadenberg
Our house has went from four
inhabitants to six.
For more than the next three weeks, we
also have a couple named Elfis and Elfina living with us. The main
issue is that Elfis truly enjoys songs from the Presley library.
Family tradition is important no matter
if Christmas is a religious holiday or a secular celebration. It's
all about unwrapping gifts, having an advent calendar for the kids,
and eating turkey dinner in your best pyjamas. Christmas is about
listening to Bing and Bowie on an Ipod, watching Alistair Sim as
Scrooge, playing Battleship or another
enjoying-conversation-with-family game, and downloading all the stats
and profiles from Canada's world juniors roster as they drop the puck
on the global U20 championships on Boxing Day with Canada facing the
United States. (Today – Dec 1 – is the day when the final tryout
roster is announced, by the way, for Canada's crew with camp set for
the Mastercard Centre of Excellence in Etobicoke Dec 10-13.)
OUR TRADITIONS
Wonderful and crafty Nicole had built
homemade advent calendars from small (wooden matches) boxes using
scrapbook paper and a glue gun. Each drawer would have either
chocolate or a note indicating it was a day for small inexpensive toy
trinket. After four years the calendar trees have been retired in
favour of a toy-building Lego calendar, which awards the child Lego
pieces to build a display scene.
As for Elfis, his job is clear, observe
Maeghan and Spencer and report back to olde St. Nick about anything
mischievous which has occurred. It's a great method of modern love
(Name dropping an old Hall & Oates song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3F4c7E9IBU)
and spoiling the ones that you loves (Air Supply:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY31ZH6hAFI).
The inventors of Elf On A Shelf are a
genius mother-daughter team, but it's the parents who must pre-occupy
their bedtime chores with placing their Elf in a new location daily
and often 'hiding' Santa's helper on a high shelf, sitting on top of
a coffee table lamp, preparing breakfast or simply relaxing after
washing dishes.
Go to www.elfontheshelf.com
and there is an entire site full of stocking stuffers, games and
puzzles, family project decorations, and naturally a link to order
merchandise, and certainly there are arrows to direct parents to
their section of the site and vice versa.
Carol, Chanda and Christa must now be
multi-millionaires.
Talk about an enterprising family
tradition. Carol Aebersold and daughter Chanda Bell wrote the Elf On
The Shelf book and sewed the original puppets before subsequent mass
production began, and now have extended the idea format to an Elf for
an upcoming birthday. Christa Pitts, meanwhile, who is the twin
sister of Bell, evolved her work with TV's home shopping network into
marketing the Elf premise. Their full stories are also found on the
website. Elf, by the way, only debuted in 2005 so he's a relatively
new tradition and not something dating back in time to Air Supply or . . . Hall & Oates singing Jingle Bell Rock (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vyMuxxLsD0)
Check out the posting below about the
Elf's sinister side. We know it's all good-nature fun, but children
under the age of 10 shouldn't surf through their parents Facebook
pages as they will likely discover misbehaving Elf as I have seen him
twerk, go on dates with Barbie, break tree ornaments, and drink too
much egg nog. You could say, maniacal parents – me included –
have taken the premise and turned it around 180 degrees for innocent
fun, but again making sure the true 'gem' of the initial idea is not
ruined for small children.
Elf On The Shelf is a tradition for us,
and I hope you enjoy all your family traditions throughout December
and into the new year.
LINKS:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/elf-on-the-shelf-festive-fun-or-santa-s-sinister-spy-1.2881386
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vyMuxxLsD0
House Hunting in Oxford County?
Call me today !
Mark
Schadenberg, Sales Representative
Senior
Real Estate Specialist (SRES designation)
Royal
LePage Triland Realty Brokerage
757
Dundas St, Woodstock
(519)
537-1553, cell or text
Email:
mschadenberg@rogers.com
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Mark Schadenberg, Royal LePage Triland
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