\n<\/p>\n
He decided to make it look like the doll, named Elfie, had painted on their kitchen wall. Neesley used Tootsie Rolls to build an elf-size climbing wall, posed Elfie on it with a paintbrush, and painted a message in green reminding the kids to behave<\/a><\/span>. There was even paint splatter on the floor. (The paint, Neesley said, was left over from St. Patrick\u2019s Day when a leprechaun visited and made a mess.)<\/p>\n \u201cThree glasses of wine usually gets the creativity flowing,\u201d said Neesley, who had planned to repaint that kitchen wall anyway. \u201cElf on the Shelf can be very stressful.\u201d<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t just the holiday season<\/a><\/span>. It\u2019s Elf on the Shelf time, and parents<\/a><\/span> like Neesley need ideas.<\/p>\n Elf on the Shelf, who turns 20 this year, has created lots of family memories, laughter and the occasional parental panic<\/a><\/span> over where to move the elf next.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re unfamiliar with Elf on the Shelf, here\u2019s how it works: Parents stage the doll in different spots around the home during December. The idea is that Santa Claus has dispatched the elves to keep track of the naughty and nice.<\/p>\n The idea of small, mischievous elves who protect the home — if they are treated well — can be found in Scandinavian folklore. The modern Elf on a Shelf began in Atlanta in the 1970s, when Carol Aebersold introduced her twin daughters to a magical elf doll named Fisbee who would visit each December. They would wake to find Fisbee in a different spot each morning after his quick trip overnight to the North Pole.<\/p>\n The sisters, Chanda Bell and Christa Pitts, remember telling Fisbee what they wanted for Christmas, believing he gave them a direct line to Santa. \u201cIt\u2019s the most wholesome thing you\u2019ll ever see,\u201d said Bell, who also recalls that the elf would be placed up high so they couldn\u2019t touch it. (This is now part of the lore. Children must not touch the elf because that will take away its magic.)<\/p>\n In 2004, Aebersold and Bell self-published an \u201cThe Elf on the Shelf\u201d book that came with a doll. Pitts helped with sales and marketing. It eventually took off.<\/p>\n Bell and Pitts co-founded a company, Lumistella, which has also created other dolls from Santa\u2019s world. Netflix streams four Elf on the Shelf-related movies, and there\u2019s an Elf float in the Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Day Parade<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n Antonia Katsanos of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, has made her family\u2019s Elf, named Twinkle, a year-round presence for her two daughters.<\/p>\n \u201cThe elf is watching, you have to eat your dinner. You can\u2019t just be good at Christmastime,\u201d she\u2019ll say. Twinkle has left notes to the girls asking them to pick up their Barbies.<\/p>\n Twinkle can also be mischievous. One morning, the girls found her seated in the shower by the soap, dressed like a mermaid. Other days, she was in the ice machine or hanging upside down in the car.<\/p>\n \u201cI am a creative person, but you do go dry at some point doing this over and over again, year after year,\u201d said Katsanos. \u201cI Google ideas and look at Instagram. It\u2019s sometimes a nuisance. I\u2019ve popped up from sleep at 3:30 a.m. remembering I need to move the elf.\u201d<\/p>\n Seeing her daughters\u2019 faces in the morning when they discover where Twinkle is makes it worthwhile, she said.<\/p>\n Others keep the tradition low-key.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t get elaborate, we just move the elf,\u201d said Ashley Zavala of St. Paul, Minnesota, who works late as a bartender and doesn\u2019t want the stress of dealing with anything too detailed when she gets home.<\/p>\n \u201cOur kids like it and they don\u2019t know the difference because they haven\u2019t had their elf do crazy things.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Zavala looks at pictures online and sends clever ideas to her cousin who goes all out.<\/p>\n One option for parents who feel fresh out of ideas is to recruit a kid who has aged out of the experience.<\/p>\n \u201cReacher\u201d star Alan Ritchson says his older son has done just that and it\u2019s worked brilliantly.<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s the cheat code. You get a 13-year-old who figures it out a couple years earlier than he should, and then he becomes your little Elf on the Shelf weapon. So they get excited. They\u2019ll never miss a night. And you get a kid who\u2019s coming up with ideas for you. That\u2019s the trick,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Sandi Celentano, also of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, introduced both Elf on the Shelf and Mensch on a Bench to her interfaith household, but it was too much work so she stopped.<\/p>\n \u201cThe amount of time and energy that it took thinking of creative ways to display these things every single day — it just took over everyone\u2019s lives. I\u2019ve boycotted it for about three or four years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n window.fbAsyncInit = function() { };<\/p>\n (function(d, s, id){ A few years ago, Kurt Neesley of Redondo Beach, California, was brainstorming where to put his family\u2019s Elf on the Shelf for his three kids to find the next morning. He decided to make it look like the doll, named Elfie, had painted on their kitchen wall. Neesley used Tootsie Rolls to build an elf-size … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Elf-on-the-Shelf-turns-20-and-parents-share-tales.com2Fd22F112Fc541bfcc3536df9df6634a31a82b2Ffdeaa11675ee4209ac62.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12248,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12246\/revisions\/12248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}First, a wee history<\/h2>\n
Some parents have mischievous fun<\/h2>\n
Some parents keep it simple<\/h2>\n
Draft the elders<\/h2>\n
Elf on the Shelf, meet Mensch on a Bench<\/h2>\nOhio father Neal Hoffman was inspired by Elf on a Shelf to create a similar tradition for Jewish families. His Mensch on a Bench doll and book combo teaches kids about Hanukkah. Hoffman successfully pitched the idea on ABCs \u201cShark Tank\u201d in 2014, where he recruited investors.<\/p>\n
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