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Santa’s little spy went from shelf to scorched.
One mom had a holiday meltdown this week after accidentally “roasting” her daughter’s Elf on the Shelf — and nearly igniting Christmas chaos in the process.
“I forgot the f—g elf was in the oven,” she admitted in a viral Reddit post, recalling the moment she preheated for half-baked pizzas and nearly turned her festive spy into a charred disaster.
The mom said she never signed up for Elf on the Shelf, especially with her oldest child’s birthday falling on Christmas Eve.
For the uninitiated, “The Elf on the Shelf” isn’t just a toy — it’s a tiny tattletale.
The 2005 children’s book, written by Carol Aebersold and her daughter Chanda Bell, turned an old family Christmas tradition into a nationwide obsession.
These days, Elf on a Shelf has parents doing the unimaginable to make their little ones happy — including placing it in forgotten places that almost burned the house down.
The elf spent a few days chilling in the fridge — literally — giving mom a blissful, elfless break. However, that peace quickly ended when she preheated the oven for a pizza delivery.
“Why does it smell like burning pla-oh f—k!!!” she recalled, pulling the elf out mid-crisis and rushing it under the faucet to cool down.
Only the tag was singed, but the soggy elf was quickly hidden in a cabinet — a waterlogged casualty of Christmas chaos. At this point, she says next year the elf can live in the dog kennel.
For this parent, the holidays are a lot less magical — but infinitely more relatable. And Reddit had thoughts.
One commenter perfectly summed up the holiday struggle: “That’s wholeheartedly how I feel about that elf. My child thinks he ran away. As she’d say as a baby, ‘I can’t care.’”
Another agreed, noting, “Christmas magic was easier when we weren’t inventing new traditions and then expecting ourselves to keep up with all of them. We personally don’t fw the elf in my house.”
Others offered more creative solutions. “Read your kid the Hobbit. Have the elf send a note that they were reassigned to Middle-earth to help Bilbo,” suggested one “Lord of the Rings” fan, while another shared a real-life workaround: “We were all sick with the flu for a week and a half, the elf returned today with an apology note saying he was sick too lol.”
And of course, there’s always the easy out, as someone else pointed out in the thread: “You have a cheeky puppy RIGHT THERE lmao, blame elf’s disappearance on the dog!”
One mom took that tactic to viral levels this month.
User @erica.l17 filmed her two toddlers sobbing uncontrollably — then panned to their family Dalmatian proudly holding the Elf on the Shelf in his mouth, as the kids begged her to send the video straight to Santa.
The elf may survive another year, but for stressed parents everywhere, the holiday madness is real — and hilariously relatable.
