Little Brownie Purple Coat

We never bought into the whole Elf on the Shelf trend. For one, I do good just with the daily task of raising three girls, loving Ed, and making it out of the house with matching shoes and my bra. Most days I forget my purse but at this point it's a given and I've accepted defeat where that's concerned. Luckily, Rylee now ask if I have it before we leave the driveway and if I don't have her as my reminder, Ed always meets me at the gas station when I'm so out of fuel that I can't leave the pump. Granted, he gives me the look of disappointment upon arrival but I know it's well deserved and the fact is he still comes to my rescue. For that I love him very much. So factoring in all of the above, I acknowledge the risk of potential failure if "Elfie's" needs had to be added to the five already in our house plus the dog and cat.

The second reason Elfie has been excluded from our family may not matter to most but it's a big deal to me. Sadly, all the elves are just a little (and by little I mean a lot) creepy looking. To start, their face haunts me even when they're not around. And then there's the fact that they are way to skinny to be from the North Pole. I mean I would assume that all elves would have a little plumpness to them. Think about all the cookies and treats that Mrs. Claus bakes. Plus Santa is supposedly a really nice and jolly guy. You know, the kind that would share really well. And since Elfie and his buddies don't require a bigger dress, I can only assume that they are very bad elves and that they get excluded from snack time regularly. This leads me to reason number three.

I've been hearing reports that elves everywhere are having fights with exploding feather pillows and are baking cookies in the middle of the night leaving flour scattered throughout the kitchen. And furthermore, they don't seem to clean up after themselves. Hearing all this just reinforces my belief that Mrs. Claus really does send all the elves to bed without dinner and dessert - probably more often then not.

Don't get me wrong. Ed and I like to have a good time and love even more to see our children have a good time. We're very aware that we are not perfect parents nor are we uptight. On occasion we have been known to look the other way but we also understand that our kids thrive when we provide them structure without mixed signals. I can't help but get a little confused by an elf that moves in temporarily to watch over "who is naughty" and "who is nice" that in essence breaks more rules than the children themselves. If this confuses me, I can only imagine the explanations we'd have to create just to get "hall monitor" Rylee off our back.

And lastly, we need our children to be on their best behavior in public places AND at school not just at home. Elfie on the shelf doesn't fit the requirements of being in all of the places that we need him. That's why in our family we have Little Brownie Purple Coat, Santa's Chief Elf in Charge.

You see, Santa is a very busy man. So busy he has to have lots and lots of help. One of those helpers is Little Brownie Purple Coat. LBPC typically starts making his rounds the day after Thanksgiving and works all the way up until Christmas Eve. He visits each and every little boy and girl in the whole world and reports back to Santa. The catch is, his schedule is very busy considering he only has a month to see every child and we don't know his schedule. That's why we have to be good all of the time. How devastating would it be if the one time we were fighting with our siblings or not respecting adults was the one time that LBPC was watching?

Our children love talking about LBPC. They look for him and imagine what he looks like. Rylee at age three determined that Santa could not fit into LBPC's jacket because he was way to big for a little coat.

Many parents that I encounter don't quite understand LBPC, mostly because Elf on the Shelf is so popular. Friends and other moms frequently ask what mischief our elf has been up to. It seems to be an assumption that everyone has at least one if not multiple. When confronted with the opportunity to discuss, I don't feel guilty or inferior for not buying into the new rage. I actually feel relieved that our elf is imaginary and that we get to "create" his being and our memories by simply using our imagination. The added bonus is that each of our children will be able to take their own memory of LBPC with them as adults, without us having to purchase multiple elves.