What People Misunderstand This Week: the Origin of Christmas Elves

Since it’s Christmas, I decided to tackle some of the myths and misconceptions we have about the holiday: Christmas misinformation is rampant, and I want to set the record straight. Last week, I delved into who Santa Claus really is , with additional activities about Saint Nicholas bringing children back from the dead and the religious war between Santa and Kris Kringle. One thing I didn’t mention? His elves.

Christmas elves seem to have been around forever, and people have developed surprisingly consistent ideas about their purpose: they’re small, wear green clothes, make toys with some innate magical power, and adore shelves. But this diversity of elves is a relatively recent invention; “real” elves were often anything but cheerful little workers. The millennia-long transition of elves from supernatural nightmare creatures to friendly factory workers is a cultural Rorschach test, demonstrating Western culture’s shifting views on work, wealth, and what it means to be a “useful” member of society.

Dark Elves of the Past

To understand how we arrived at our current concept of elves, we need to go back in time, beyond Will Ferrell movies, Christmas specials, and Victorian holiday baubles, to the colder heart of Western culture—an older, strange world populated by supernatural forces, where elves were creatures you would never trust to spy on your children.

The exact origin of elves is impossible to determine, as the concept of elves existed long before the advent of writing. Magical, humanoid races have been mentioned in the mythologies and oral traditions of cultures around the world; however, elves were particularly prevalent in Scandinavian and Germanic folklore. This type of elf (usually) resembled Legolas more than Hermie from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer —human-sized and magical, though sometimes mischievous.

However, in Anglo-Saxon England, elves were real scoundrels. Ancient English medical texts attributed various illnesses to elves. If you experienced sharp, inexplicable pain, it was likely the result of an ” elfshot “—an elf shooting an invisible arrow at you. Elves were also associated with witchcraft , nightmares, and mental disorders.

Various Elven Atrocities

Elves did all sorts of bad things. In a sense, of course: the names and deeds of elves, fairies, hobbies, and other creatures were essentially interchangeable and regional, so it’s difficult to attribute anything specifically to elves (after all, it could just as easily have been a nixie or a brownie).

In the Middle Ages, elves/fairies/other small magical creatures were known to kidnap infants, replacing them with changelings —sickly impostors left in the place of humans. They could curse livestock, spoil milk, or lead travelers astray in the forest. Elves were blamed for the sudden death of infants or unexplained childhood illnesses. ” Elflocks ” were a particularly nasty prank, where elves would tangle a person’s hair into impossible knots while they slept—the scoundrels! In other words, these weren’t the kind of people you’d help make toys for. They were essentially alien creatures, operating by rules humans couldn’t understand and certainly couldn’t trust, and they weren’t created for entertainment or for children. They were deadly serious and considered quite real.

The emergence of temporary elven helpers

So how did we go from nightmarish creatures causing illness and kidnapping children to Santa’s personal toy-making proletariat? In medieval and early modern Britain, there was a widespread belief in what I call “transitional elves.” These were household spirits who came out at night to perform household chores while families slept. Helpful, to be sure, but these elves were fickle and easily offended. They might leave forever if they felt insulted or used. You couldn’t even do them any favors—if you made them clothes, they might decide to leave forever , shouting, “Give Brownie a coat, give Brownie a sarka, you won’t get any more work, Brownie!”

Folk representations of elves as “household helpers” often feature artisans, a step closer to toymakers. These stories inspired the text that laid the foundation for Christmas elves: the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” In the story, a shoemaker is down to his last piece of leather, but wakes up to find a pair of shoes made by elves. He sells them and continues to receive free shoemaking labor until he becomes rich. Then he makes the fatal mistake of rewarding his unpaid workers with clothes and shoes. The elves are so impressed by their new, stylish clothes and shoes that they leave forever, presumably because they now consider themselves too good for working-class life. Moral: don’t treat your workers too well, or they will think they are your equals.

How Elves Became Associated with Christmas

Along with shaping much of the Santa Claus mythology, Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem ” A Visit from St. Nicholas ” (better known as “The Night Before Christmas”) describes Santa Claus himself as “a very jolly old elf.” This line laid the foundation for the association of elves with Christmas. An 1857 poem titled ” The Miracles of Santa Claus ” makes this clear. Santa, the poem states, “keeps a host of elves busy,” making “a million lovely things” such as “pies, sugar plums, and toys.”

Reflecting the Industrial Revolution far from the North Pole, elves weren’t just household spirits helping one family, but a workforce mass-producing toys in a factory. And, in what can be seen as an expression of sentimental Victorian notions of class, elves loved to work in sweatshops; it was their destiny!

Here’s the first image of Santa’s workshop from Godey’s Lady’s Book magazine in 1873. Godey’s magazine had a huge circulation in the United States at the time, and this image cemented the modern image of Santa’s workshop.

Modern Christmas Elves

The 1964 Rankin/Bass television special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” concluded the elf Christmas story by revealing a deeper understanding of the North Pole workshop. Perhaps fueled by growing cultural anxieties about modernization and capitalism, Santa’s workshop in “Rudolph” is rife with vicious office politics, forced conformity, workers whose dreams and ambitions are dashed (“He just wanted to be a dentist , Santa!”), and a boss who completely misunderstands his employees. The only major innovation in the elf story since “Rudolph” has been the “Elf on the Shelf,” but he’s a damn snitch, so we won’t talk about him.

The next time you see a green-suited helper in a Christmas movie, remember that this cheerful little toy was created from medieval folklore, German fairy tales, and 19th-century magazine illustrations, and was also shaped by industrialization. The modern elf is a domesticated, “sterile,” capitalist-approved descendant of the supernatural beings who kidnapped babies, drove people mad, and shot invisible arrows at your ancestors. Merry Christmas!

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