Santa Claus and the Surveillance State

[Commentary] Elf on the Shelf is a doll that millions of parents display around their homes in December as a reminder to children to behave. The elf also, a new paper argues, promotes acceptance of a surveillance state.

The elf encourages children "to accept or even seek out external observation of their actions outside of their caregivers and familial structures." So the Elf on the Shelf is somewhere between mildly and overtly threatening on the 1984 spectrum. But the idea of non-familial surveillance in the home has been baked into the way people have celebrated Christmas for centuries. Children have long been warned that Santa Claus sees them when they're sleeping and knows when they're awake. Santa, they're told, keeps lists of citizens based on this judgment.