December 2025

I’m everyone’s favourite person at Christmas.

I’m the popular teacher in the canteen, who intercepts children en route to the bin with the remains of their Christmas dinner and shrieks, ‘My dog will eat that!’

I’m the guest who arrives to a friend’s festive party, with their offerings packed into a gift bag so old that the arse falls out of it when I emerge from the car and watch the cans of craft beer go rolling down their driveway and the mince pies crumble as they hit the deck. THEN, when I go to put the offending bag in their blue bin, I deliver a mini lecture on why soft plastics (including bubble wrap) don’t belong with all the rest of the recycling items. It remains to see whether I’ll be invited back. It was my first visit.

You want to see me, hovering around the kitchen island, saying ‘do you know that you use that foil again to cover left over vegetables or even line your grill? Mind if I take it home? We go through a LOT of bacon this time of year.’ People often take a nod and smile approach, as they would a doddery relative.

When it comes to wrapping presents I’m up to my usual antics, digging out paper from yesteryear and leafing through old Guardian papers for decorative pictures. I purchase one roll of festive wrap a year from Oxfam for bigger items. My loved ones tell me they feel like the anointed one when they detect the lack of wrinkles and realise they have been given virgin paper. Don’t worry I say, you’ll see it again next year, so don’t get used to it.

Needless to say, I am not a fan of the novelty gift, aka plastic shite that one appreciates for all of seven minutes in the spirit of frivolity, and wonders how long they can respectfully wait before it goes in the bin. Makes me all a-quiver, that sort of thing.

Talking about getting me going in a different sense is thinking how to use all the waste products- all those salvaged Amazon boxes, vegetable scrapings and leftover cards. LSB wonders if he’d see a bit more action if he took a job with Bryson House, or even just got hold of one of their uniforms for an evening.

A good pal has just put six raised beds into her garden. We stood surveying her husband’s handiwork from her warm living room. She was getting excited about the plants she would be filling them with. I on the other hand, was becoming increasingly animated, telling her to chuck in all her green waste and cardboard so she wouldn’t need as much compost. ‘Donkey manure!’ I said. ‘Need any? ‘I can source some.’ Another guest politely left in search of prosecco at this point.  Can’t say I blame her.

When I start talking about well-rotted equine shit it’s probably my cue to sign off. May I wish you all the merriest of Christmases, and urge you to take your joy wherever you find it.   If you’re looking for me you might find me down Ormeau Recycling Centre, with a beatific smile on my face.

I was chatting to a girl in work recently who is normally sanguine and imperturbable. (Then again, compared to me, most people are.) It was thus a surprise when she let forth a string of invective on Monday which, even for a Monday,  had a distinctly maritime feel. If you too are a parent of younger children perhaps you find yourself in the same boat (pardon the pun.) December has landed, and alongside festive cheer and anxiety it brings with it another annoyance- the bastarding elf on the shelf. If you want to know how to make twenty-four days in December feel longer than Dry January and Lent put together, then go ahead and invite this torment into your lives.

 This lady I mentioned earlier summed up exactly the frustration I used to feel myself in this scenario- falling into bed, fatigue laden and grateful for a soft duvet, anticipating a lovely sleep when the thought appears, Where’s the effing ELF!!

One invariably finds that the partner who has ordered the elf, having been cajoled into doing it because ‘the elf visits other people’s houses so why not ours?’ is the one who is either blissfully snoring or clean out of ideas to do with elves at exactly six minutes to midnight.

When I asked my offspring whether they missed their bygone Elf on the Shelf days, only for them to shrug and say no, they didn’t. When pressed further, as to why they had no fond memories of the demonic sprite who had wrecked the advent period for me for five consecutive years, they said, ‘Well, he didn’t really do much.’

‘HE DIDN’T REALLY DO MUCH?’  I spluttered. Well, the Mothership could have heard me in Bangor, such was my ire.

‘There was the thing in the bathroom once,’ offered the Small Child. Trust my children to remember something scatological, I thought, although I couldn’t recall doing anything too toilety with an elf. I know some elf zealots get busy with chocolate fondant icing but to me that was a step too far. In a house with multiple animals and small children one sees enough excrement, without having to fashion replicates. Yes, piped up the Older One. You wrote, ‘I’m back’ on the bathroom mirror in red lipstick. ‘Did I? I can’t remember,’ I mused.

‘And once, you strung some tights round the lights over the kitchen island and said he was on a zip line.’ I didn’t remember that either. And that was the conversation closed. Two things, they recalled, two things their elf did, and frankly, they were both a bit shite.

I vividly recall having him build Lego and ice buns and putting little floury footprints over work surfaces. He drew portraits and wrote notes and yes, admittedly, there were occasions when I stuck him in the Christmas Tree for three days with a note that said, ‘I’ve been too naughty so I’m here learning manners,’ but the rest of the time he had a fairly packed schedule.

So, my message is this: children forget things. When it comes to elves on shelves, the ratio to aggravation versus appreciation rests firmly on the former.

Before I posted this, I searched the blog to see what I’d written before on this topic. And there, in 2022 as though to spite me, was a post where I actually spoke up in FAVOUR of elf antics. All I can say is that I must have been hotting the drink when I wrote it. Hard. I don’t remember it with much delight, in retrospect, and more importantly, neither do my children! So consider yourselves off the hook, ye who ponder whether to be assed or not.