Self-restraint on the shelf, with the elf
Ever since Mary’s home cake-making business took off, and Maria’s Etsy page hawking handcrafted hair bows tanked, there’s been serious beef between them.
With all the sniping and backhanded character assassination of each other during coffee breaks at Dewey Decimal Elementary’s school site council meetings, it didn’t seem like it could get any worse.
Things had already been unbearable around the subdivision in years past as Maria forced her husband, Jose, out of the second-story window of their home just hours after Thanksgiving dinner to lay out elaborate light displays on par with Clark Griswold’s mightiest work. By God, the Garcias would be the royal family of holiday decor at Salt Cedar Villas if it were the last thing she did.
Of course each year that caused Mary to have a conniption fit and buy every last inflatable snow globe and Harley-riding Santa, a gaudy collection she added to every November in order to best her best frenemy and neighborhood nemesis. Joseph found it ridiculous, but this was his wife, so he trudged out into the yard to set up these air-powered monstrosities like he was told.
But when Elf on the Shelf came along, these Real Housewives of the Imperial Valley kicked up their rivalry in excruciatingly exciting and nauseating new ways.
Squared off on an equal playing field and an empty canvas, Maria Garcia and Mary Etan made social media their battleground of one-upmanship: who could collect the most Facebook likes and Instagram hearts with their creative elf poses.
It was a new kind of blood sport, where each woman defied the physics of their cotton/poly-filled Christmas mischief makers and contorted little Snowflake and Gingersnap into a twisted new position and accompanying photo shoot each night after the kids had gone to bed and their iced lattes and Ambien had taken hold.
Mary threw out the first salvo in a big way, like a shot heard ‘round Stroller Strides track. Laid out in a bed of all-purpose flour, Gingersnap was covered from furry little head to felt-covered toe in white powder, making precious snow angels.
She tallied 26 likes on Facebook and 115 hearts on Instagram (she set her profile to public just for this occasion and hashtagged the pics #elfontheshelf).
Maria would have Day 1, though, as Snowflake perched atop a stack of K-Cups and trying to brew hot cocoa in her Keurig broke the Internet … among their mutual “friends” anyway.
Facebook: 79 likes. Instagram: 123 hearts.
And so it went, each woman in a mad dash to best the other, incorporating house pets, grooming supplies, various food stuffs, and on slow days, when the ideas flowed like cold maple syrup, InstaCollage and PicGrid gave a splash of Yuletide effects like snow or holly berries and multiple angles.
It was sad, really, and everyone saw through the charade as their likes incrementally faded in proportion to their sickeningly sweet proclamations of attentive motherhood.
Oh yeah, did we mention this was supposedly for the kids?
What it ended up being was a sort of softcore porn for helicopter moms and the kind of women who found envy in inanity. Elf on the Shelf was invented to keep the kids in line during the andrenalized days of December, but with masturbatory elf tweaking from one end of social media to the other, this innocent exercise took on a sad kind of perversity.
Speaking of which …
While Jose spent endless hours in the garage “tinkering” and trying to stay out of Maria’s unhealthy obsession with Mary and as far away from elves as possible, Joseph began to take a shine to staging his own “elfies,” creating an uncensored Tumblr page unbeknownst to Mary titled “Go Elf Yourself.”
Seizing on the naughty Elf on the Shelf fetish pages on Pinterest or Flickr, Joseph started putting Gingersnap in compromising positions and unnatural poses involving less-than-family-friendly fantasies.
Somehow, no matter how dark Joe’s creations, no matter how obscene, they couldn’t seem to top the depravity of Maria and Mary, who were telling anyone still paying attention that this was all about making the holidays special for the kids (yeah, them again).
Sorry, the Internet ain’t buying it, ladies. There aren’t enough sparkling granite countertops and gleaming stainless-steel appliances in the backgrounds of those pictorials to hide those dirty black intentions.
This column originally appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Dec. 19, 2014.