You Know Those Little Umbrellas?

 Xanthe came running to me yesterday morning breathless, saying, "Mom!  Mom!  Elfie didn't move last night!  He just stayed on my tree!"  Oh, groan, the Christmas Elf who moved to a new spot every night last year.  The generic version of Elf on a Shelf.  I told Xanthe, "You know, I think Elfie is just going to stay there this year.  He's...tired."

Coincidentally, I'm a little tired myself.  I still like Christmas, I just don't have the gumption to do much about it.  Our Christmas tree is on the back porch because when we went to set it up, instead of visions of sugarplums, I had visions of broken ornaments, courtesy of Tziporah, and assorted non-Christmas items being chucked into the branches in an attempt to clean the house, courtesy of me.  Combine that with the gaudy treasures the kids hang on the tree and the redecorating that Tziporah is wont to do, and you have a 12-foot mess taking up space.  How's that for bah humbug?  My solution was to place a solid surface between us and the tree, where we can still see the lights.  I love it.  It's my best idea ever.

My worst idea ever was the conversation I had with Xanthe as she was going to bed last night.  She looked balefully at Elfie, still inanimate as ever in the branches of the Christmas tree at the foot of her bed.  She asked, "Why is he so tired?"  I said, "Oh, I don't know.  He probably had a summer gig or something that wore him out."
"What's a summer gig?"
"Oh, like playing in a band or serving drinks at a bar in the Bahamas or something."
"What's the Bahamas?"

So I went on to create this whole back story about why Elfie was so worn out from his summer gig as a bartender in the Bahamas, and how he just needs to rest for awhile because helping Santa is going to be really tough this year, and how next year, he'll probably just stay at the North Pole over the summer and make a few toys instead of getting a summer gig.  What I didn't tell Xanthe, because she's too young to understand, is that Elfie developed a drinking problem over the summer, mixing all those cocktails, and ended up in jail for stealing a whole case of those tiny umbrellas and using them to make Elf vignettes, where the elves look like they're doing funny things.  Only in this instance, they really were doing funny things, because - dare I say it - they were all drunk.

So Elfie is spending this year in rehab, and that's why he isn't playing pranks at our house.  He barely has the strength to crawl back to Xanthe's tree each night after his EA meetings. (Elfoholics Anonymous)  If he stays on the wagon and off the old egg nog, he'll be back to his usual self next Christmas, I hope.

Otherwise, I'll have to fabricate another story, with a built-in FAKE LIE I skillfully omit when telling the story to children, to spare them the sordid FAKE details of their beloved Elfie's life.

No wonder I'm so tired.  I think I'm doing Christmas all wrong.