Christmas Elf Coloring Pages
Santa himself gets called a jolly old elf in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, a poem from 1823. These days the real work at the North Pole belongs to his helpers. They make toys, feed the reindeer, pack the gifts and load the sleigh, all while wearing pointy hats and curly shoes.
Jump to: Elves at Work | Cute Elves | Color by Numbers | History of Christmas Elves
Elves at Work
The North Pole workshop is a busy place. There's a toy train to hammer together, a teddy bear to finish and plenty of paint to go around.
Elves and Reindeer
Wild reindeer spend the winter digging through snow for lichen. Santa's reindeer get carrots, so an elf with a bucket is always welcome.
Packing Gifts and Loading the Sleigh
A sleigh is a sled built to glide over snow, and Santa's has to hold every present in the world. It takes a lot of elves to pack that much.
Cute Elves and Elf Faces
In old folklore elves could be tall or tiny, kind or tricky. The Christmas elf is the small and cheerful kind, always glad to help.
Candy Cane Elves
The curve on a candy cane means it can hang from a tree branch.
Color by Numbers
Santa's helpers get a number puzzle too. Each shape has a number and the key tells you which color goes with it.
The History of Christmas Elves
Fantasy Elves
Long before elves wrapped presents, old northern stories said they lived in forests and under hills, and that they could be kind or tricky depending on the day. The fantasy elf pages look a lot more like those storybook elves.
The Nisse of Denmark
In old Denmark a nisse was a small bearded man in a red cap who was said to look after the farm at night. His pay was a bowl of Christmas porridge with a pat of butter on top, and everyone knew better than to forget the butter.
The Nisse of Denmark coloring pages
The Tomte of Sweden
In Sweden the old farm spirit is called a tomte, and he went on to become Santa Claus himself. Swedish children call him the Jultomte, and a Yule goat was handing out the presents long before he took over the job.
Why Do Elves Help Santa?
Santa has a huge job, so it makes sense that he'd need help. The funny part is that his helpers didn't show up right away. The 1823 poem calls Santa himself a jolly old elf, but there's no workshop and no crew of toymakers anywhere in it.
The idea of elves doing quiet work was already old by then. In an old fairy tale a pair of little helpers finish a poor shoemaker's shoes overnight, and in Scandinavia the nisse and the tomte looked after the farm while everyone slept. All they wanted in return was a bowl of porridge with butter on top, left out on Christmas Eve.
Then artists and writers got busy. In 1881 a Swedish artist painted a tomte with a white beard and a red cap, and he started to look a lot like Santa's cousin. Over in America, a popular magazine put Santa on its 1873 Christmas cover surrounded by toys and elves, and the picture stuck.
There's even a bit of mystery. Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, put together a collection called Christmas Elves in the 1850s. It was never published and the manuscript is lost, so nobody can say what her elves were like.
Put it all together and you get the elf we know today: a small, hard-working helper who never asks to be thanked. Honestly, that sounds like a nisse who moved to the North Pole.