Better Not Pout

This Christmas season, we've got an extra pair of eyes looking out for who's being naughty or nice - the Elf on the Shelf:

“Chippy,” as Sean has named him, spends his day watching over Sean and then at night, he flies to the North Pole to tell Santa whether Sean's behavior was good or not-so-good that day. Before morning, Chippy returns to our house and sits himself down in a different spot, so it should be fun for the kids to try to find Chippy in the morning. But sometimes Chippy hasn't moved, which means Mommy forgot to move him he'd rather spend the night in our warm house and travel to the North Pole while the kids are at school … but he’s always watching!!!

I was talking to the mom of one of Sean's friends about the Elf, and she told me that her son positively quakes at the mention of their Elf talking to Santa. It's not quite the same for Sean - when we tell him that Chippy will report any misdeeds to Santa, Sean usually ends up saying something along the lines of “No he won’t! I’m going to hit Chippy on the bottom!!” Scandalized, I tell Sean that Santa won’t be happy about that, to which Sean usually replies, “Chippy won’t tell Santa because I’m going to throw him out the window!” Poor Chippy ... at least Clare thinks he's a "nice baby." But I think Sean is warming up to him - he's been threatening Chippy less and seems more excited to look for him each day.

Getting in a frenzy talking about Chippy!

Tonight we learned about another judge of behavior just in time for Krampusnacht – the celebration of Krampus! In the Alpine region, Krampus is Santa’s wicked counter-part who visits naughty children on the night of December 5 and either: 1) smacks them with a birch branch or 2) carries them away in a sack. Good children wake up in theirs beds all safe and snug on December Sixth to find that Santa has brought them a stocking full of goodies. While I certainly don’t condone a whupping with a birch branch, I thought maybe Krampus would be more Sean’s style in terms of "watchful" holiday characters, given his predeliction for bad guys and villians. We watched a video featuring a song about Krampus and Sean gleefully pointed out all the "bad boys the Krampos puts in his bag to take away to the North Pole to say 'sorry' to Santa!"

In the end, it doesn't really matter who's watching, the best motivator for "good" behavior is the promise of chocolate after dinner from the Advent calendar - seems like that'll work with Clare, too :-)