Elfin Magic

For the third year in a row, The Elves have arrived.

While I suppose they could arrive anytime, they hitch a ride to our house with St. Nicholas on the eve of December 6th.  This is when the empty shoes that make up a huge array surrounding the Christmas tree skirt are filled the next morning with gold chocolate coins, favorite candies, and old-fashioned bottles of Coca-Cola.  Merryn and Andy squealed aloud this year when they spied the 12 inch NorthPoleans nestled in their own stockings hanging by the Christmas tree.

Brownie and Charlie supposedly were sent to make sure the Krenz kids are good and kind in the days leading up to Christmas.  However, even though we have never actually seen them move, these elves have been known to cause mischief and commotion all over our house!

Last year they baked brownies, and made good use of the abundance of powdered sugar strewn everywhere by also making snow angels on the kitchen table.  Somehow, one snow-filled night, they snuck outside and had a blast in the snow, which they smartly preserved inside.  Merryn eventually found them in the freezer with a mound of snowballs and a stuffed polar bear too.  We've also found them in the refrigerator with fresh sugar cookie dough for the kids, and they even provided a cookie cutter shaped like an elf!

If the snow was not in the forecast, they made their own winter wonderland by TP-ing the livingroom or having marshmallow wars.  Other mornings we found them watching a big stack of Christmas movies and eating microwave popcorn, or playing the Wii.  They had even figured out how to make their own Wii Mii profiles!

They've played Scrabble (the whole board was a criss-cross of Christmas and winter words), decorated the children's bedrooms with lights and sparkly ornaments, switched out all the drawers in every dresser of the house (imagine the difficulties of getting to school on time THAT morning), and actually ordered themselves a Pizza Hut pizza.  (The empty pizza box and the car parked crooked in the driveway were proof of it!). 

I won't soon forget, however, the night they spent cutting huge letters out of colored pieces of paper, using every one of our decorative craft scissors with scalloped and sharp-toothed edges.  Nearly 30 letters!  It was a jaw-dropping sight to first see the scissors and rolls of messed up tape and residual scraps that literally covered the entire floor of the sitting room, the room into which everyone enters our home.  But on a single wall, the fruit of their labor:  "JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON".

I left that pile of stuff on the floor there all day, and the graffiti until The Epiphany.

The elves come during a busy and often stress-filled time of year.  The calendar is jam-packed with meetings and programs and practices and games and shopping and commitments and festive parties.  We're often rushed and hurried and heavily burdened.  On tired, wintery nights, those elves add to the list.

However, I'm sincerely grateful for the opportunity to host them.  They bring joy and expectation every morning to our children, and they provide these weary parents an opportunity to remember how to just be PLAYFUL.  Afterall, we're anticipating the arrival of Jesus who truly brings Joy to the World.

And that, for me, is really a gift.