What ICE and Elf on the Shelf have in common

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Traditionnnn, tradition!

The holiday season is unusually fertile ground for traditions.

The weight of family togetherness, the warmth of a fire and the lack of much else to do can quickly turn chance occurrences into annual requirements. Scrambling for a way to fill the hours while the shops are closed and networks are running marathons of the same movies, a time-waster within eyesight of tinsel can morph into something remarkably durable.

I’ll give you an example from my own life. I’m the oldest of three siblings, with about five years separating me and my next youngest sister. We grew up in a terribly ‘90s home, built while open-concept designs had Americans in a stranglehold. Its three bedrooms centered around the requisite One Big Room that served as living room, dining room, entryway and kitchen. The microwave messed with the TV and you couldn’t hold a conversation while anyone was doing dishes but, otherwise, it was a fine set-up. The only time it really affected the flow of our lives was Christmas Eve.

A single step out of a bedroom at the wrong time would instantly vaporize the Santa myth for my younger sisters. I was put in charge of a kiddie quarantine after church, laying out pallets of blankets on the floor of my bedroom and desperately trying to keep them occupied until they fell asleep. My room was sparsely furnished and my interests (books and basketball) were of little use in a dark bedroom with no space to move. What I did have was a JCPenney television set and a PlayStation.

For more than 20 years now, the three of us have marked Christmas Eve with a family tournament of the fighting game “Tekken.” The original copy of (influential but slow) “Tekken 3” eventually gave up the ghost and was replaced by “Tekken 5” sometime before the Great Recession. That game is old enough to drink, but we’re in no rush to swap it out. Traditions can be surprisingly resistant to innovation (even those slapped together out of desperation).

My siblings aren’t stingy with the designation, so we’ve added plenty of traditions in the years since we first pitted capoeira master Eddy Gordo against samurai alien Yoshimitsu. We form a three-person pit and shove each other during the long “Gloria” of “Angels We Have Heard on High.” We grab drinks at our hometown’s “fancy” bar after church. Pretty much anything we liked doing twice qualifies. When you’re that open to the idea of new traditions, seeing someone try to force it rankles.

Take Elf on the Shelf (please). The Christmas decoration and children’s book launched in 2005, supposedly based on a real tradition in the household of authors Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell. The titular doll, an agent of Santa Claus carrying out recon on the household, was intentionally designed with a “a retro feel that…felt special and traditional.” It was boosted by a familial connection to a QVC host and born marketer. The best-seller narrowed the scope of Santa’s power at a time when plausibility and realism were en vogue, and successfully subverted the icky feelings that come along with a try-hard trend. Its slick packaging allowed parents to look the other way on its normalization of surveillance, the Yuletide version of a Ring doorbell.

Of a nearly identical vintage, the Department of Homeland Security has set about justifying its own existence in similar ways. The post-9/11 amalgam of agencies puts on the costume of the stalwart defender of tradition to hide its youthful acne. Its recruitment campaigns ape calls to crusades in half-joking memes, hoping to soften and then justify ICE’s widespread surveillance and violence. Each raid and subsequent press conference about protecting the homeland cheapens and diminishes the American ideal, restricting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to an ever-smaller group of people.

Of course, the levels of real-world harm done by Elf on the Shelf and ICE are incomparable. Still, it’s worth noting that they snuck into our lives and insisted they were always here. Be wary of anyone who stands on tradition that’s shockingly new to you. Any claim that “we’ve always done it this way” should inspire a few questions. Namely, who the hell is “we”? And who the hell are you?

What do you think? Is it okay to try and push a readymade tradition? Have you adopted any that you like? And while we’re here, any strange traditions you’d like to share? Click the speech bubble icon to sound off in the comments.

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