The ACLU wants you to stick the Elf on the Shelf back up in the attic for the last time.

For those of you unfamiliar with the tradition, The Elf on the Shelf has been enjoyed by generation of children, as in one. It was created by a mother-daughter team who thought it would be a really fun idea to make a lot of money.

The book, together with the elf, made its debut all the way back in 2005. Keep in mind that these were primitive, simple times. There were no smart phones, just flip phones necessitating people to use a form of communication known as a "conversation." These conversations were accomplished using mouth noises not unlike our cavemen ancestors.

As the totally made-up story goes, the elf keeps an eye on your children during the day and then travels back to the North Pole each night to report on your behavior before returning to a different part of your house to continue the stakeout.

And that, according to the ACLU and other privacy groups dedicated to civil liberties and unhappiness, is the problem.

But the ACLU together with a number of other privacy and civil rights organizations believe the elf to be invasive, creepy and even dangerous, and they're telling parents the toy should perhaps 'be left on store shelves.'

Wait, what do you mean by dangerous?

'I don't want to sound like a Grinch,...

...but we shouldn't be celebrating seasonal surveillance,' Albert Fox Cahn from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a civil rights and privacy group, told The New York Times.

'It's really a terrible message for kids.'

Seasonal surveillance. Points for alliteration.

The concern is that the elf teaches children the wrong lessons when it comes to privacy and makes children acclimatized to be being monitored and passively accept constantly being watched by an unseen authority figure.

Santa Claus. We're talking about Santa Claus who has an actual list he checks to determine if you've been "naughty or nice," based on arbitrary parameters over which the children have little to no input.

Why, they are starting to make childhood sound a lot like... childhood.

'No one should be looking at you in your bedroom without consent,' Cahn added. 'There is a cost to normalizing surveillance, even in the most adorable ways.

You mean like your mom?

'I don't want to be the first one to take Santa Claus to court for invasion of privacy, but consent matters, and having privacy matters.'

Consent.

From five-year-olds.

When you think about it, pretty much all our children's traditions involve some level of lawlessness starting with breaking and entering. There's Santa Claus, of course, but there's also the Easter Bunny, a horrifically oversized anthropomorphic Leporidae who enters your home and hides perishable foods all over your house.

And let's add the tooth fairy, a creature of indeterminate form who enters your child's bedroom (without consent!) to steal their teeth! Sure, they leave behind some modest remuneration, but who knows if that's even market value? And who's to say they'll wait patiently for your children's teeth to fall out naturally?

And yet somehow, generation after generation of Americans emerged from childhood with an appreciation for our most cherished rights and the principles of liberty on which they rest.

What the ACLU misses, along with all the other self-appointed loco parentis wannabees, is that kids actually have these individuals living with them whose responsibility it is to watch over them and guide them to become good citizens. They are called, "parents."

The admittedly creepy nature of The Elf on the Shelf (and the rest) is not just part of the fun, but also a great learning opportunity. I wasn't crazy about the Elf at first, but I embraced it, and it became a source of fun for my son and I to point out the surveillance nature of the Elf and the violations of privacy and so on. If anything, the Elf has served as a great way to make these issues real and personal for him as opposed to abstract theories.

Let's just say that when you wake up to find a wide-eyed elf sitting in your bathroom, it tends to focus the mind which may or may not be an actual example.

Besides, it's just silly childhood fun.