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Memoirs of a SLACer

sociological views on life and the liberal arts

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Have yourself a snarky little Christmas »

Christmas as social control

December 11, 2014 by John

Bentham and Foucault might have been interested in the panopticon but every December we get a view of  true social control in the form of an overweight man at the North Pole. Santa Claus (or Sandy Claws, as he is sometimes called) is just the latest in a long line of beings whose sole purpose is to control children through fear (Krampus is another example, as is the Belsnickel, as Dwight demonstrated on The Office). Recently, though, Santa has been doing his spying by proxy (giving him more time to bully young reindeer).

In Santa’s place are his elves on the shelves, a team of small elves who began taking up residence in people’s homes in 2005. These elves observe the behavior of children and then fly back to the North Pole to report their observations to Santa each night. The magical ability to do so begins when the elves are named (before this point they are apparently in some sort of coma during which they can be sealed in boxes and sent to stores around the country) but the elves are in danger of losing their magic if touched. Upon returning each night, the elves hide in a new place and children delight in finding them each morning. Apparently, some of the elves also like to get into mischief, making them both spies and hypocrites.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

If you have continued reading, prepare yourself for a shock. The elves are actually inanimate objects with neither magic nor the ability to report to Santa Claus each night. Instead, adults in each household are responsible for moving the elves around (thus touching them and ruining any magical potential that they may have had). As you can imagine, this creates quite a bit of work for these adults, to the point that there are posts dedicated to dealing with the fact that they forgot to move the elves. The elves have also been copied in various ways. Telling children that Santa can see them when they’re sleeping and knows when they’re awake and knows if they’ve been bad or good seems much easier, especially since adults are likely to run out of creative places to hide the elf after about the third day.

Assuming that the intention of Santa, Krampus, the Belsnickel, and the elves on the shelves is social control, it seems that the elves would be both the least effective and the biggest pain in the ass. Imagine if the prison designed by Bentham made it possible that prisoners could be observed at any time unless they touched the prison wall, in which case a door came down that cut off the potential view of the guards. There might be no escaping Santa’s creepy spying or the Belsnickel’s judgment, but if I was a kid and I wanted to get away with bad behavior you can bet that the first thing I would do is touch the damn elf.

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Posted in Arts and Letters, Holidays, Parents | Tagged Belsnickel, Christmas, Elf on the Shelf, Jeremy Bentham, Krampus, Memoirs of a SLACer, Michel Foucault, Panopticon, Santa Claus, Social Control | 5 Comments

5 Responses

  1. on December 15, 2014 at 10:05 am Have yourself a snarky little Christmas | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] « Christmas as social control […]


  2. on November 29, 2015 at 9:05 pm Preferred pronouns on the shelf | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] While doing my capitalist duty this weekend, I noticed that there actually is a benefit to those annoying Elf on the Shelf dolls (aside, of course, from social control): […]


  3. on December 8, 2015 at 9:02 pm ELF ON THE SHELF! | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] that I’ve written about Elf on the Shelf a few times in the past, a friend recently sent me a link to another sociologist’s take on the elf, which […]


  4. on December 22, 2015 at 2:51 pm ‘Tis the season | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] 2014: Christmas as social control […]


  5. on December 7, 2016 at 9:01 pm The war on (terrible) Christmas (songs) | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] 2014: Christmas as social control […]



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