Shelf Help

Be There in Five · Dec 8, 2025 · 1h 59m

This week, Kate investigates Elf on the Shelf: cute Christmas tradition or late-capitalist nightmare? After a simple Instagram question turned into hundreds of responses about surveillance capitalism, invisible labor, and performative parenting, she started to unpack what this manufactured tradition reveals about millennial parenting, Christmas magic, and the mental load of the holidays. Can it just be holly-jolly casual for those of us who like light whimsy labor, or does it have to match its corresponding oppressive, mischievous Christmas elf canon? Plus, the suspicious origin story of…