I am convinced that my mom, and probably every other mom in the 1970s, was the inspiration for the ever-so-popular “Elf on the Shelf.”
Nowadays, parents unveil this magical elfin’ creature, name it, and then have to remember to move it every night while the kids are sleeping. The elf has to move so the unsuspecting children believe that he made his nightly report to Santa Claus as to whether the kiddos have been naughty or nice.
Well, my mom perfected this parental manipulation without a stuffed puppet.
Every year, mom would wrap the presents early, and they would go under the tree. The tree always sat in the living room, right in front of the window, where it was impossible not to notice the pretty wrapped gifts. My brother and I would sneak to the tree and touch the presents. We’d squeeze them and do the obligatory shake, and each time, our mom would yell for us to “get outta there!”
And she yelled it in this manner she had of accenting each syllable through clenched teeth so it always sounded like, “Get. Outta. There!”
We never minded if we figured out a gift or two because, in true Santa fashion, the gifts multiplied on Christmas morning, and we were always surprised by our one big gift. Mom never put all of the gifts under the tree. Well, not until I was about 9 or 10 years old. She taught me a lesson then that I still remember almost 40 years later.
That was the Christmas when our neighbor taught us how to unwrap presents without ripping the paper and masterfully put them back together again without a clue. My memory won’t allow me to remember whether she caught us or if we told on ourselves, but I can remember her telling us to “get outta there” because those were all the presents we had.
Of course, we didn’t believe her because she always kept the biggest and best gifts for Santa Claus to deliver. So, we continued to unwrap gifts every chance we got.
The biggest moral dilemma I faced in all of this was wanting to use the Walkman tape player that was neatly wrapped with my name on it. It was pure torture for me to have to put that badboy back under the tree. I’m sure you can figure out the rest of the story. Although mom had told us time and time again that there were no extra presents, I kept opening and opening, leaving the only surprise on Christmas morning to be the fact that there weren’t any other presents under the tree. I had refused to listen, and my mom, Santa’s apparent snitching elf, had told the big guy. Santa flew right over our house that year. It was the most boring Christmas of my life … and, ironically, the only one I really remember.
I don’t know why there weren’t more packages waiting for us on Christmas Day that year, and I don’t want to know, to be honest. I need to believe that the lesson was the gift that year and not lack of money. I need to believe that she saved herself a lot of money and energy by not running out to make sure there were gifts we didn’t know about. I, now a single mom of two teens, need to believe that she gave us the gift of tough love, and did it to teach us an invaluable lesson even though I remember being deathly embarrassed when the generic goods, labeled in black and white, were in our shopping cart at the grocery store; even though I remember the blocks of government cheese in the fridge; even though I remember getting so mad at her when she made me walk to the corner store with the food stamp book, which you had to count and tear off in front of everyone.
I don’t remember ever really wanting for much. It seems, at least in my memories, that I always had enough.
As for my own kids, I have never placed packages under the tree until Christmas morning. There are a number of reasons for this, but the one that trumps them all is that I, too, wouldn’t have put extra presents under the tree on Christmas morning if their curiosity had gotten the best of them. Sometimes, enough doesn’t leave room for extras or mistakes in judgement.
So this year, when the presents have been carried out and placed under the tree early Christmas morning while they’re still sleeping, I will focus on what we do have rather than what we don’t. And, hopefully, when they are 48 years old and have kids of their own, they will look back and remember, if nothing else, that the most important gift was that I did what I did so that they, too, can have just enough.
