Those of you who have been traveling through life with me over the past several years know that December is elf of the shelf month in my house. Every morning, Max hides my miniature elf, Kringle, somewhere in the great room at the front of my house. I search for him each day and, boy, does he get into some mischief. Kringle is very, very little, He is about as long as my thumb and about half the width of my thumb. Unfortunately, because he is so small and his limbs tend to be a bit delicate, he has had a few amputations over the years. He has lost bits of appendages, which makes him even smaller. His size makes it extremely easy for him to hide in places where he is almost undetectable. Sometimes, I need a lot of hints. This year, though, I’ve been hot on the Kringle trail most mornings. Both Max and I look forward to playing our elf game. It makes me quite giddy. Yes, I am very, very weird.
But maybe I am not the only one who is very, very weird. Two of my friends are intrigued by my elf adventures. They asked me to text them pictures each morning to show what Kringle was up to. We have invented quite the elaborate mythology around the process.
One morning, Kringle was at the bottom of a Moscow mule cup and another morning, he hid in a double shot glass. We decided the all-night benders had to stop and recommended that it was time for an intervention. The next day, he obviously felt he needed wise counsel and hid in the pages of my devotional booklet. Another day, he was trying to read the Bible, but his hands were too tiny to open the book. We took him on our annual Disney holiday vacation, and, on the last day, he was obviously ready to go home because he was hiding in my open purse. Once, he was sitting in the corner, behind the sliding shutters in the dining room, facing the wall. We decided he must have been misbehaving in elf school. On another morning, he was hiding behind one of the legs of our kitchen table. I said it was a lucky thing it did not take me long to find him because it took me pretty much all day to get up again after wiggling myself down to find him. My elf-finding skills may be improving with age, but my elf-retrieval skills are not!
I am glad that my friends are enjoying Kringle’s adventures with me. Sometimes, in the weird world within my brain, it can feel kind of lonely. After all, I cannot expect upstanding, reasonable adults to understand my obsession with a three-inch piece of plastic. It is nice to know that other people do live in Weird World, too. Or maybe that is going a bit too far. Maybe no one else really lives in my Weird World, but I love it when they come to visit!
Have a holly, jolly, very merry Christmas! Here’s to Kringle and spreading the cheer… one elf at a time!
What is your weirdest Christmas tradition? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.
Have a very merry, holly jolly Christmas, everybody!!!!
Terri/Dorry 😊