Lindsay Woods: My home has become the festive version of The Hunger Games

My home has become the festive version of The Hunger Games. Mainly due to the competitive battleground between a diminutive elf and a faux root vegetable. Whilst the elf can claim several prior years of residence, his pixie nose has been considerably put out of joint by the arrival of Kevin the Carrot, writes Lindsay Woods.

However, Kevin did not rock up to rent a sweet little bachelor pad for himself and attempt to curry favour with Buddy by knocking back a few egg nogs at the bar; no, he brought the wife and kids. Specifically, Katie, Jasper, Chantenay and Baby. Not since Bethlehem has the phrase ‘no room at the inn’ been more applicable.

As way of consolation, my youngest decided it was high time that Buddy settled down and therefore bestowed upon him his own ‘Trouble and Strife’. So, it came to pass that Barbie was shoehorned into some puritanical Sylvanian garb, with a miniature LOL baby stuffed beneath her smocked apron and perched on the edge of Buddy’s bed to drag him by the tinsel full pelt into the arena of parenting.

It was a relatively short gestational period (12 hours in total), such is the way of elves. Buddy became the proud father of twins the following morning while Barbie reclined in hot pink stilettos whilst receiving congratulatory glances from the Carrot family.

A few hours later, a bassinet appeared to house the new arrivals. The new parents sported a look of extreme exhaustion that only those who are thrust into the role of responsibility for someone other than themselves can wear. But all was not well… and the Carrots looked overly smug about the impending news which was about to shatter Buddy’s world.

“Barbie has another family,” announced my daughter the following day.

Lo, tucked into a miniature sleigh was Hunter Huntsman and two babes swaddled in blankets… once more, supplied by the charitable Sylvanians. To say, I did not anticipate such developments with our elf this year was an understatement.

Buddy arrived into our home four years ago to aid the hopeful transition of our then three-year-old onto the ‘Nice List’. There he sat, a perma grinned pixie, unwavering in his festive optimism as my daughter side-eyed and hissed threats in relation to his demise. They were worthy adversaries but, as the date for Buddy’s departure loomed, they came to an ‘entente cordiale’ of sorts: in return for my daughter’s exemplary behaviour, Buddy played ball and threw himself into orchestrating elaborate scenarios which caused my children to bolt downstairs each morning to view same.

However, as time came to pass and my children grew older, it seemed only logical that Buddy did also. Being the stand up and modern elf about town that he is, he took the arrival of Snow Baby’s half-siblings in his stride and promptly budged up on the shelf to accommodate all. I struggle to believe that Kevin would have been quite so magnanimous. He is still heavily invested in thwarting the misadventures of Pascal the Parsnip.

Whereas once, I looked upon his arrival with a weary sigh (my husband was slightly more colourful in his expressions) as yet another part of a never-ending To Do list, as the years progressed, so too did my affection for the little harbinger of all things festive.

Buddy has, and continues to be, a reminder that all of those promises which were listed in the letters to the Big Man, need to be upheld. He also assumes many guises in various households: sometimes as an elf but in other homes he may view the occupants via the smoke alarm (that red light does not blink of its own accord), or other times as a little bird who appears in the garden to cast a timely glance to ascertain that all is in order.

Buddy has grown with us and where once his arrival was to instil good behaviour, now, it heralds the beginning of the festive period. He also now has a companion which resides in my parent’s house at the insistence of my daughter, ‘To keep an eye on Grandad!’

Yet, while we welcome the addition of the Carrot family into the fold, there will forever and always be, only one Prime Pixie for us.

@thegirlinthepaper