Agent Scout Pickles talks exclusively to the Stratford Press about the Elf on the Shelf secret agents.
They are the secret agents of the North Pole.
Members of the top secret Elf on the Shelf reconnaissance team are highly-trained operatives posted to spy for Santa on children worldwide.
In the lead-up to Christmas, these sneaky elves arrive in homes around the world, sending daily reports back to the North Pole to keep the naughty (and nice) lists up to date.
For the first time, one of them has agreed to be interviewed by ILONA HANNE of the Stratford Press.
Scout Pickles has been an Elf on the Shelf for 90 years, but is no longer active in the field, having taken a job in HQ soon after the secret of the Santa spy squad became public. He is now in charge of a squad of more than 100 elves, each one matched with a specific family to spy on.
"It was Facebook that did it really. Before then, we went about our mission with little fuss. We rarely got spotted, and even when we did parents didn't believe their children about us. Called us Figments of the Imagination, which I thought was a human boy band but apparently it means we were made up. Well, we're not made up obviously, but we were private. We didn't like being seen, at least my generation didn't, but this new lot of recruits ... well, they certainly aren't publicity shy are they. I mean, the number of sELFies they take, it's just ridiculous, an elf could go blind from that many camera flashes.
"Anyway, a few years back there was that book. It gave away some of our secrets and told the world we existed. So that made our life harder, and then just as we had come to terms with the new fame, along came Facebook. Suddenly everyone's Facebook feed was full of pictures of our recruits spying on the young humans. "Now everyone knows what we look like and we have no secrecy left.
"So management, they decided we had to evolve. 'Embrace the change' they called it. Suddenly we weren't hiding in branches of Christmas trees checking children were tidying their rooms and doing their chores, but instead we were expected to play tricks, and deliberately get caught by the humans. Well! It just didn't make sense. And I told management that too. Next thing I knew, I was an elf who had been shelved! No longer needed for active service they said. Time to take a rest and slow down they said. Leave it to the younger ones, they said. So here I am. Sat in HQ trying to make sense of all these posting requests.
"See, it's not as straight forward as you might think. You can't just take Sparkles Sugarplum and tell her she is being posted to the Volzke family in Stratford for example, because next thing you know she is emailing management and complaining that she is scared of Romeo and Juliet in the town Glockenspiel and please can she be posted somewhere warmer.
"So we are careful on matching. Some places are popular postings of course. Anywhere which featured on the Lord of the Rings movies gets lots of volunteers, especially from the boy elves. They all seem to think they are going to meet Arwen and live happily ever after! And no elf wants to go to Mount Maunganui. We don't like sand. It gets in our hats, and behind our ears and it is awful to get rid of.
"Facebook really has made our life harder. It's no longer enough for an elf scout to simply hang out and watch the children. Now they are expected to do things too for the children to see the next day. Every night they need to come up with a new trick or bit of mischief. So at HQ we now have a whole team focused on coming up with ideas which are sent out in the daily email to all operatives.
"I can't say I'm sorry not to be out if the field anymore, going by those daily emails. I mean, who would willingly tie themselves upside down to a Christmas tree? What if the children sleep in and don't see you for hours? "All that blood rushing to your ears. I read on the internet if you hang upside down for too long your ears lose their point. We'd look like humans then, and who would want to look like that?
"These new recruits though, they love it. Some of them are getting quite a following online nowadays, with other elves watching to see what trick they will do next. One of them, Norman, he is one of the most popular of them all. Every day in the office, I hear other elves asking if anyone has seen what he has done "this time". They have posters of him on their walls even!
"I remember him first going on his mission. To Stoke Callington in England. He didn't know where it was on a map! I said to him, you should know where you are going, you need an escape plan if the mission goes belly up, but he didn't care. Said it wasn't enemy territory, just the human world. Well, if that isn't foreign fields, I don't know what is. But he just packed his bags and set off. Sent me a postcard the other day actually. The young ones in the office couldn't believe I knew Norman well enough to get a postcard. He didn't say much, just that he was having a great time, eating lots of clotted cream, whatever that is, and was busy keeping tabs on the five children he was assigned to. The youngest human child, Finley, is six now apparently.
"Norman says they are nice children (for humans) and he likes returning each year. Once Christmas is over he and all the others will be back at HQ on annual leave in time of the office party. I just hope no photos from that turn up on Facebook.