Have Yourself a Creepy Little Christmas

It's bad enough that there's a Grinch who steals all your Christmas presents when you're not looking.  But how about a character who steals your very soul because he is constantly looking?

Welcome to Christmas in the United Stasi. With an unacceptable 40 percent of us still rebelling against  Big Brother, the murketers of the Surveillance State realize that if they're to gain total control, they have to get to us early in our lives, when our psyches are still malleable. I just hadn't realized the depth of the indoctrination until I came across this blurb in my local rag:

It’s December, and that means the Elf on the Shelf is in children’s homes, watching their behavior and reporting back to Santa.

You never know where he’ll pop up, or what type of props will surround him.

Send us photos of your most creative Elf on a Shelf (or Mensch on a Bench) scenes. Recordonline readers will vote for their favorites; the winner will get a $50 Amazon gift card.

I realized, to my chagrin, that I've been so busy lambasting the murketing of Obama's health insurance product I have been completely out of the Elf on the Shelf loop. A whole new corporate post 9/11 kiddie spy mythology has grown up around me without my even noticing! I'd even missed a TV holiday infomercial (animation outsourced to India) on the ubiquitous little creature. But my local rag linked me the official page, and thus was I enlightened about the Legend (TM).

The Elf on the Shelf® is a special scout elf sent from the North Pole to help Santa Claus manage his naughty and nice lists. When a family adopts an elf and gives it a name, the elf receives its Christmas magic and can fly to the North Pole each night to tell Santa Claus about all of the day's adventures. Each morning, the elf returns to its family and perches in a different place to watch the fun. Children love to wake up and race around the house looking for their elf each morning.

There are two simple rules that every child knows when it comes to having an elf. First, an elf cannot be touched; Christmas magic is very fragile and if an elf is touched it may lose that magic and be unable to fly back to the North Pole. Second, an elf cannot speak or move while anyone in the house is awake! An elf's job is to watch and listen.

Okay, so now I get why the goons at the NSA are so riled about being exposed by Ed Snowden. They are fragile creatures whose very survival is dependent on the fomentation of fear. If you dare even touch them, they will lose their magical powers. Once they're exposed, their billions of dollars of funding might just go Poof! through one little act of Congress.

But back to Elf on the Shelf. Just like Murketer-in-Chief Barack Obama, the elf flacks assure consumers that Shelfie's spying on them will be carefully balanced against their quaint need for privacy. This trollish little pathogen even has a special Privacy Statement on his webpage! Although he admits he will steal your personal information and your children's personal information, share it with third parties, even track your movements, he will keep the data safe (presumably in an ultra-secret multibillion-dollar storage facility at the North Pole.)

Much to my daughter Kat's disappointment, we just missed the deadline for our local Elf on the Shelf contest. But she has her entry for next year all ready:

Clapper on the Crapper

Reach out and touch him.... I triple-dog dare you!