This year elf on the shelf was out and gnomes were in. I liked them better, they had funny, fluffy beards, no faces just a nose sticking out from under a far too big hat and fat woollen bodies. They looked far cuter to have a round the house.
Until, things started happening. Little things went missing and then reappeared in other places. I heard child like giggling and it wasn’t my own children. I came down one morning and found the dishes all washed and put away!
‘What is going on around here?’ I muttered as I went around the playroom and put away all the farm animals for the third time that week.
‘It’s the gnomes, mum!’ my children cried.
‘The who?’
‘The yuletide gnomes. They keep doing all of this,’ my youngest daughter, Izzy said.
‘They like to play and keep the house clean,’ my oldest son, Ben replied, ‘I looked them up. They protect the house and like to eat porridge with butter on Christmas Eve.’
I laughed, ‘such imaginations you all have!’
‘No,’ my other daughter, Freya shouted, ‘they are real!’
I paused, ‘okay, they are real then….Do they report back to Santa like the elf did last year?’
‘Nope,’ my son replied, ‘they are like Santa and give out presents alongside a Yule goat.’
‘Is that why they keep getting the farm animals out? They need a goat?’ I questioned.
‘Maybe,’ Izzy said.
‘We need to buy a goat!’ Freya cried.
‘Let’s see what we can do then,’ I said.
That night after putting the children to bed and sitting down to watch TV with my husband, I kept looking over at the two Yuletide gnomes. Were they really the cause of things? Well, they weren’t doing any harm and if they wanted a goat and porridge on Christmas Eve then I was happy to join in the fun.
(Find out more here; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisse_(folklore) )
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