I bring tidings of fantastic news for “Elf on the Shelf” parents. (Kids: stop reading this right now. Get off the screen. Honestly. Go play outside!)
Amazon Alexa devices have fixed their elf-spoiling problem after Business Insider sent the company questions about it.
Previously, if kids asked “Alexa, who moves Elf on the Shelf?” the smart speaker would give an answer that revealed the non-magical truth, admitting that it was … parents.
If you’re wondering what this is all about: Elf on the Shelf is a relatively new Christmas tradition where each morning, kids find that a cute elf doll has moved to a new location in their home. Some people get really into it, setting up entire scenes, getting costumes for the elf, or leaving notes.
Last year, Sara Filek-Satterfield had an Alexa-induced elf disaster. “My son asked Alexa how the elf moves around the house,” she told me. “Alexa told him that the parents move the elf every night as it’s impossible for a doll to move on its own.”
Filek-Satterfield was horrified. Elf on the Shelf was a tradition her family enjoyed since her older son, now 8, was a toddler.
“I told him Alexa is on the naughty list, and it seemed to remedy the situation,” she said. This year, she said her kids are skeptical, but they still seem to believe.
My own harrowing experience with Elf on the Shelf
Before this year, I had fallen into the camp of parents who avoided the elf as just another tiresome chore. (We celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, so I’m already dealing with a heavy daily mirthload this month.) However, my kids, who are now in elementary school, heard about it from friends and were asking to do it. I figure they’re only young for a few more years, so why the heck not?
I procured an elf and introduced it to the kids the night before December 1.
Immediately, my son, who’s the older of my two kids, went to ask Alexa about how the elf moves. I unplugged Alexa halfway through its answer.
You can see the transcript on the Alexa app of how this went down:
Business Insider / Alexa app
Andy Jassy, may your stockings be full of coal and your gingerbread cookies be soggy. For shame!
Being a reasonably tech-savvy parent, I figured I could solve this. I did a little research and found TikToks of people suggesting that you could prompt Alexa not to reveal the secret. I went into the Alexa app on my phone and gave it instructions to say that Elf on the Shelf is real and never to say that parents moved it.
The next morning, Alexa seemed to have forgotten my instructions when I tested it out again. This led to an extremely frustrating and, honestly, somewhat confusing next few days. I was able to re-prompt later that morning, and when I tested again, it said that the elf was magical. And yet, when I tested two days later, it was back to saying that parents moved the elf. It seemed almost as if Alexa would “forget” my instructions after a day.
Meanwhile, I had seen other parents chattering about this issue online, and reached out to Amazon’s PR team to find out what the deal was. After a little back and forth, I received an amazing email a few days later. I screamed in delight.
“Alexa+ will offer kid-friendly responses to questions about the existence of folkloric characters like Santa, and we’ve updated the experience for when kids ask Alexa about who moves the Elf on the Shelf,” wrote Trang Nguyen, a spokesperson for Amazon.
They fixed it!
How Amazon (and I?) saved Christmas
Could it be that Amazon did this in response to me poking them? Could the prospect of an article that painted Amazon as a Grinch that ruins Christmas have spurred the Alexa engineers into action?
I like to imagine this scenario in my mind: Someone from the Amazon PR team picks up a red emergency phone that dials straight through to Jeff Bezos on his yacht. Bezos (who is not even CEO anymore, but don’t worry about that in this fantasy): “What’s this? Business Insider is going to say we ruined Elf on the Shelf?!”
He tears off his straw cowboy hat in anger and starts screaming into the phone, his silk shirt billowing in the breeze of the Mediterranean Sea. Back at HQ, a team of engineers furiously gets to work. Testers keep asking Alexa over and over about the elf, cursing and crying until finally … the holiday magic is saved.
It is also entirely possible that Amazon was already working on a fix when I sent my first email on Monday, as Nguyen suggested to me when I asked. But I think that, just like Elf on the Shelf or Santa, it’s magic for those who choose to believe. And I am choosing to believe that I personally saved Christmas, like a journalism Ernest. You’re welcome.
