What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: The Origin of Christmas Elves

Because it’s Christmas time, I’ve been digging into myths and misconceptions we have about the holiday: Yuletide misinformation is rampant, and I’m setting the record straight. Last week I dug into who Santa Claus really is , with side quests about St. Nicholas bringing children back from the dead and the religious war between Santa and Kris Kringle. One thing I didn't talk about? His elves. Christmas elves feel like they’ve been around forever, and people have strangely consistent ideas of what they’re all about-they’re small, they wear green, they make toys out of some innate magical compulsion, they love shelves- but that variety of elf is a recent invention; “real” elves were often anything but jolly little pieceworkers. The elves' thousand-year transition from supernatural nightmare creatures to friendly factory workers is a cultural Rorschach test revealing Western culture's changing attitudes about work, wealth, and what it means to be a "useful" member of society. The dark elves of the past To understand how we arrived at our current vision of elves, you have to rewind past Will Ferrell vehicles, Christmas specials, and Victorian holiday frippery to the colder heart of Western culture-the old, weird world that was haunted by supernatural forces, and elves weren’t creatures you’d ever want spying on your children. The early origin of elves can’t be pinned down exactly because the idea of elves predates the written word. Magical, man-like races were mentioned in mythology and oral traditions in cultures all over the world; but elves, specifically, were common in Norse and Germanic folklore. This variety of elf was (usually) more like Legolas than Hermey from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer- human-sized and magical, although sometimes mischievous. Elves in Anglo-Saxon England, though, were jerks. Old English medical texts attributed various diseases to elves. If you felt a sharp, unexplained pain, it was probably the result of an “ elfshot ”-an elf firing an invisible arrow at you. Elves were also associated with witchcraft , nightmares, and mental disorders. Various elven misdeeds Elves did all kinds of bad things. Kind of, anyway: The names and deeds of elves, fairies, hobs and other creatures were basically interchangeable and regional, so it's hard to ascribe anything specifically to elves (it could have been a nixie or brownie, after all). The Daily Newsletter In the Middle Ages, elves/fairies/other small magic folk were known to steal people's babies, replacing them with changelings -sickly imposters left in the human’s place. They could curse your livestock, spoil your milk, or lead travelers astray in the woods. Elves were blamed when infants died suddenly or when children developed unexplained illnesses. The " elf-lock " was a particularly nasty bit of mischief where elves would tangle your hair into impossible knots while you slept-the bastards! In other words, these were not the kind of people who would help make toys. They were fundamentally alien -beings that operated by rules humans couldn't understand and definitely couldn't trust-and they weren't for fun or for kids. They were...

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