Elf 256

Trying to be Santa for my kids sucked.

I don’t mean the part about sneaking around at night or assembling toys quietly so the dog wouldn’t bark. I mean the comparison. The gifts from their grandparents were always bigger, louder, shinier — the sort of presents that practically glowed under the tree. Every Christmas morning I’d watch my kids tear into those boxes with eyes wide enough to swallow the whole world.

And then they’d get to mine.

Modest little packages. Practical things. A couple toys. Maybe a book. Stuff bought on a budget and wrapped with more tape than style.

I was doing my best, but every year I felt like the understudy in a play where everyone else was a star. The “Santa gift” is supposed to be the best one, the grand finale, the thing kids brag about on the playground.

But what’s a divorced father supposed to do when the North Pole payroll clearly favors the grandparents?

One year, while sitting alone on my couch surrounded by torn wrapping paper and the remains of a very disappointing “Santa haul,” something clicked.

If I couldn’t be Santa… maybe I could be a good elf.

The next Christmas, I told my kids that I didn’t know Santa personally — he’s busy, after all — but I did know one of the elves who worked the stocking line. An elf named 256. A good elf. A loyal elf. An elf with access to all the oddball goodies that never made it into the official Santa bags.

Elf 256, I explained, had a habit of making “elf bags” on the side. Nothing fancy — just candy, silly trinkets, and stocking stuffers. The sort of things elves loved but Santa didn’t always approve for big gifts.

And Elf 256 had rules.

Each kid’s bag got a small Nerf gun.

My bag got a bigger one.

(“Why do elves give parents Nerf guns?” my son asked.

“To defend ourselves,” I said. “Elves know kids are dangerous once they’re armed.”)

And just like that, a tradition was born.

Every year the kids waited for the elf bags as eagerly — maybe more eagerly — than the Santa gifts. They’d dump them out on the carpet and sort through the treasures: candy canes, bouncy balls, plastic puzzles, those little capsule toys that grow into foam dinosaurs in water. The cheap, silly stuff that somehow creates the biggest smiles.

Then the Nerf battle would begin.

I’d take cover behind the couch, firing wildly while the kids launched a coordinated assault with the disciplined fury of a well-trained holiday militia. Wrapping paper flew, ornaments trembled, and even the dog got involved, barking at invisible elves we claimed were “providing air support.”

Those elf bags didn’t cost much. Five bucks each, sometimes ten. But they built a piece of Christmas that was ours — something no one else could outshine or outspend.

Years later, when my daughter was in high school, she was helping me bring decorations down from the attic. We found an old Nerf dart wedged behind a box, probably adhesive with a decade of attic dust. She picked it up, smiled, and said softly:

“You know, Dad… I really believed in Elf 256.”

She said it with no embarrassment, no apology — just the quiet affection of someone remembering a piece of childhood magic that still mattered.

What could I do but hug her?

“I love you,” I told her. “I always have.”

She hugged me tighter.

So if you’re stuck on a child’s gift this Christmas, and the budget is tight, or your heart feels heavy because life didn’t turn out quite the way you planned — remember Elf 256.

He doesn’t do fancy.

He doesn’t do expensive.

He does candy, goofy stocking stuffers, and Nerf ambushes.

And he delivers every one of them with a whole lot of love.