Commentary: Do we believe in elves? Of course! Otherwise we'd miss out on the magic

We all buy into a suspension of disbelief in certain areas of our lives. We play the lottery (someone’s gonna win), channel what our dogs and cats are thinking (I know this is not just me) and expect our plants to thrive even when we don’t water them (maybe that one’s just me). We are capable of being extraordinarily optimistic.

Of course, if ever there were a season for magical thinking, it’s Christmas. I have a friend who clearly cast a spell on her two cats and got them to pose — glumly but nonetheless — in festive knit hats for a Christmas photo. We believe in Santa Claus, reindeer that fly, and elves on shelves that descend from the North Pole and embed themselves in our homes.

OK, I’m a little late to the party that embraces these elfin figures inspired by a 2005 book: 10 inches or so, of diverse skin colors and genders, all uniformly dressed in sleek red unitards, accessorized with a white collar and red-and-white cone-shaped hats.

They swing from makeshift trapezes and zipline across Christmas trees. They tuck themselves into shoes, sandwiches and other kooky spots. More than 22 million have made their way into homes around the world, and they are quite cosmopolitan. They did a Vogue fashion shoot dressed by Thom Browne and other designers.

They don’t bring gifts. Technically they are Scout Elves, and theoretically their job is to watch over children and report back on naughty or nice behavior. But some parents, wisely, can’t brook a surveillance state in their home and choose to not inform their kids of this bit of the lore. The elves may live to delight children, but (spoiler alert for any young children who read the Los Angeles Times — and thank you for reading!) it is the job of parents to come up with activities for the elves.

The daily surprise is their real purpose: One morning a girl might awaken to see the elf nestled next to her bed; another day a boy might find his household’s elf ensconced in the kitchen in the midst of making pancakes. A few days ago, my friend Tony reported that his daughters awoke to find their elf had turned on the mini Christmas lights and switched hats with a snowman ornament. (Clever dad.)

For all the work that parents do, couldn’t the elves do more for parents? Why can’t they cook dinner or make the beds or drive you to work? If we can have driverless cars, surely we can have elves driving cars. That would be an elf to take off the shelf every single day. But they tend to be more puckish than productive, and that’s part of their charm. It’s a season for fun.

The magic of these elves shouldn’t strain our imaginations too much. The tooth fairy deposits money under a pillow and no one ever sees her — or him or them. We believe in Santa and we never see him, just the half-eaten cookies and gifts he leaves behind. We’ve seen a million pictures of Santa with his puffy cheeks and snowy white beard. Yet no child really cares what he looks like.

I once wrote about the proliferation of Santas at Christmastime — in stores, on the streets. At an event in Culver City, a Black Santa held court listening to children recite their Christmas lists. The adults stood by, pleased at the ecumenical nature of the Santa event and the fact that none of the kids commented on this Santa not matching the pictures in storybooks. Why would they? Who cared as long as he was getting their Christmas lists down?

For years at a Catholic church in the South Bay, the hugely popular early evening Christmas Eve Mass featuring a children’s choir would come to a close after Holy Communion with the priest standing before the congregation. He would start to say a few words only to be interrupted by the sound of jingling bells. The lights would dim, and up the main aisle would come Santa Claus carrying a big red bag. The children would laugh and applaud, parents would take pictures, and Santa would walk over to a Nativity scene on one side of the church, kneel for a moment, and then wave and exit through a side door into the dark evening. There is no Santa Claus in the “greatest story ever told,” but there was one that night in the church. And everyone embraced him.

There can be a very human temptation to pick apart magical beliefs, a tendency that sets in at some point in childhood — or perhaps that marks the end of childhood. But at this time of year, I see inspiration for a different approach. Instead of letting our dreary realism call into question the Santas and the elves, we could hold on to our holiday imaginings and lean into that other very human impulse: the will to believe, against all odds, in better times and a better world year-round.