Elf is Back on the Shelf, Boys

After years without Elf-on-the-Shelf, I’m seeing a lot of instances of the Elf-on-the-Shelf meme scrolling down my Facebook feed this holiday season. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m feeling an impromptu session of analyze the meme!

Elf-on-the-Shelf is at its core phonological. The pun doesn’t have anything to do with meaning or spelling – it is all in the sounds. The literary device it uses to showcase this play on sounds is rhyme and the meme is templated. Usually, this template looks like two scuffed pictures, wonkily photoshopped, one on top of the other, and the words “you’ve heard of elf on the shelf, now get ready for…” When we see these words, we know the game is on. We know, these seemingly deranged and unrelated pictures must rhyme.

A well-authored Elf on the Shelf will have a twist or two – like perhaps the natural reading of the images cannot rhyme with each other, and we’re called upon to find the hidden synonym. There is also a variation template with three images instead of two, which add an extra challenge to the game.

If you were on Facebook around 2017, you may remember how these elves blasted onto the feeds of just about everyone. Notably, it was a meme for all ages, and we were just as likely to see retirees share the meme as the usual meme contributors in their teens and twenties. Which is where, I suppose, its notoriety came from. With everyone posting and reposting, it was enough to drive anyone bonkers.

Social media turned on the meme, and it was widely ridiculed for its shallow commitment to rhyme. Where similar memes play with the semantic relationship between elements of the template, leaving a lot of room for reinterpretation and innovation, Elf-on-the-Shelf replays the same joke over and over again. The first Elf-on-the-Shelf is a puzzle, and it’s downhill from there.