Henry: The Little Painted Penguin Who Became a Christmas Tradition

My memories list on Facebook recently alerted me to the fact that our family’s somewhat unique Christmas tradition is 11 years old this December. I’ve been a little nostalgic this year anyway, since my kids are teenagers now, and my eldest will be 18 in just a few months. I also recently lost a dear cat, aged 20 years, who had spent the last 19 years as part of my family. In general, while I love the holidays, December tends to bring bittersweet memories of days gone by and friends and family who aren’t around anymore. But Henry the Lightbulb Penguin is a happy memory, and he’s still around making more happy memories. So, I thought I’d take a moment and share Henry’s story with you, in case you’re in need of a little Christmas cheer up.

Back in December 2011, life was ok, but not wonderful, for me and my two kids, a daughter and son, ages 6 and 5 respectively at that time. My divorce from their father has just been finalized in May of that year. In late 2009, I had separated from my spouse due to his infidelity and unwillingness to work to repair our relationship. At the time I had been reducing my hours at a job I didn’t love, getting ready to quit and devote time to being a stay-at-home mom while pursuing a dream of writing for a living. My husband had done a stint of stay-at-home parenting and being his own boss as a handyman while I was the “breadwinner,” but he had decided to return to his old full-time job after struggling as a businessman. It was supposed to be my turn to walk away from a job that drained me to try being my own boss while taking care of the kids so we could avoid daycare costs, but things didn’t work out that way. I was in a tough position. The separation was not only heartbreaking, it was scary, because I wasn’t even working 10 hours a week at the time but had two kids depending on me. I looked for other jobs and took on as many more hours at work as were available, but nothing came my way, and I wasn’t going to be able to afford preschool for my son or after school care for either child if things didn’t change. Thankfully, by the beginning of 2011, I was able to be hired back full-time at the job I had been trying to break away from. Not what I had hoped for, but I could breathe easily again, with an adequate paycheck. Things were headed in the right direction, but a childcare settlement still needed to be finalized (that wouldn’t happen until the spring of 2012 for various reasons), and I was afraid that I would need to sell the house that we lived in, which I had occupied before I ever started dating the kids’ father. That worked out too; I kept the house and closed on it in my name alone the following spring, a month after the childcare settlement was finalized. But in December 2011, my kids and I had been through a lot, and still had some road to travel before we could collectively exhale and finally settle down into our new reality. Did I mention that my wedding anniversary was also in December? The Counting Crows knew what they were singing about in “Long December.”

I did my best to keep my spirits up, and help the kids do the same. We’d play a game in which we’d take turns naming things that made us happy. We played, read, and gardened together in the warmer weather. And I stretched our thin resources as far as I could. At Christmas time, that meant making gifts for other relatives. Our family had always done this to some extent, but now it was doubly important — to save funds and to occupy the kids with hopefully fun crafts as a temporary distraction from new realities. I have always cared deeply about waste reduction and avoidance, even cajoling my parents into recycling as a teen. Plus, my career has been focused on waste reduction and sustainable management of materials. So, the crafts we made that year would’ve involved reuse and recycling even if money had not been tight. The fact that it was just gave me another reason to use items that might otherwise be considered trash as fodder for our crafts. We painted old metal bottle caps to look like snowmen or birds and hot glued magnets to their undersides to make refrigerator magnet sets. The kids rolled beeswax sheets into candles while I filled reused glass jars with melted wax. We baked and assembled jars of dried herbs from the garden to give as edible gifts. In previous years, I had painted burned-out light bulbs to look like Santa heads. Those were made from the sort of bulb curled at the end or pointed at the tip to simulate a candle flame. I’d turn them upside down and paint a face with the pointed bit comprising Santa’s beard, then glue on a hanger and some fabric to make a hat. Painting the fine faces on the Santa ornaments would be too hard for my little elves, I knew. So, during that 2011 craft fest, I decided we’d use some normal burned-out incandescent bulbs which I had saved up to paint ornaments easier for small hands to decorate.

Some of the bulbs we painted looked like snowmen. Others were painted to look like birds. I think we may have painted a cardinal for one of their uncles who loves the baseball team of the same name. Perhaps it wasn’t that year, but at some point, I know the kids and I painted owls. But mostly, to keep with the wintry theme, we painted penguins. We’d perch our painted bulbs on the mouths of old glass jars or poke the threaded ends into boxes or old foam egg cartons so the paint could dry. Later came the part that was mine alone — affixing a hanger and hot-gluing fabric on to make a hat. No matter how I tried I always managed to burn my fingertips as I shaped things. Even this step involved reuse as much as possible. If I had to use new fabric instead of a scrap, old finger from a glove or baby sock as a hat, I would still make use of cotton saved from vitamin bottles to make the trim.

The kids’ ornaments were understandably a bit messier than mine, but still super cute, and we made those types of ornaments over the course of a few holiday seasons after 2011. In a subsequent year, I even made a few such ornaments to sell at a local craft fair. But there was one little penguin that I made that first year we painted ornaments together who the kids and I felt drawn too. Was he perfect? No. But there was something about him that made us all smile. With my fingertips smarting from the hot glue of putting on his hat, I decided that maybe he didn’t need a hanger after all. Maybe we could keep this little penguin and use him as an “elf on the shelf.” I presented the idea to the kids, and they liked it. I gave them the task of naming him, and they decided his name was Henry.

In case you’re not familiar with “Elf on a Shelf,” it typically involves parents moving a small elf doll around the house in the days leading up to Christmas, posing it in various situations, and maybe making up stories about the doll’s antics. This relatively new Christmas tradition in the U.S. started with the publication of a book based on one family’s tradition in 2005, the year my daughter was born, so it was fairly popular at the time Henry was created. I imagine some of their friends at school has elves on shelves at home. But one thing I could guarantee — no other family had Henry the Lightbulb Penguin moving about their house having adventures. That first year, Henry was very much like any other “elf on the shelf.” Because he was round on the bottom, he needed something to sit in. I had a small blue enamel cup, like a tiny version of the cups you might use while camping, which I used as a candle holder. For the holidays, this would become Henry’s teacup toboggan, a proper form of travel for a magical little penguin. He moved each night while the kids slept. In the morning they’d find him, and I’d tell them the story behind his position. I shared his exploits on Facebook.

One day Henry was found on my headboard between two moose Christmas decorations the kids liked. The post on Facebook that went along with the picture of this said “Henry wasn’t sure why Mr. and Mrs. Moose were sitting so far apart from each other (his gossipy friend Gingerbread Cutter might know), but he felt foolish sitting between them and trying to carry the conversation, practically shouting so they both could hear him. Perhaps it was time to excuse himself and get another glass of egg nog.” One morning Henry was perched atop a spice rack I had just mounted on the kitchen wall, it’s acorn-capped bottles echoing his own shape. The story/Facebook post for this suggested that Henry liked to sit there and pretend to be a general commanding his troops.

Other days, Henry would interact with figurines I had out year-round, or with little dolls or toys in the kids’ bedroom.

If the kids went to their dad’s new home for an overnight visit, Henry wouldn’t move in their absence, returning to his adventures when they returned home. When they went to their dad’s home to celebrate Christmas, they came back to find Henry on the mantle, guarding their letters from Santa.

The next year, I realized that I couldn’t reuse the same old positions and stories from the year before, yet I didn’t want to buy a lot of new items to make Henry’s adventures novel. I got lucky while shopping at a thrift store one weekend in 2012 while the kids were visiting their dad. I came across a set of stamps shaped like little elves and snowmen. Each figure stamped a different picture. It gave me an idea, and I snapped up the stamp set and stowed it away until December 2012. When Henry began to move on the first of December, the kids were surprised to find a little elf beside our penguin friend, along with a story that some poorly behaved elves had run away from Santa’s workshop where their task was to stamp pictures on toys. Henry had been tasked with tracking them down.

Each day, Henry found a new rogue elf (I called all the stamps elves, even though some were dressed more like snowmen). Each elf was found trouble-making, and every morning, my children would take the newly discovered runaway and line them up with their peers in front of the television, where we could keep an eye on them for Henry until Santa arrived. I posted on Facebook that apparently the TV stand was like elf “juvie hall.”

One little troublemaker was perched atop a musical windmill inherited when my mother passed away. Another tried to fly about on a pheasant refrigerator magnet which had spring-mounted wings. Some rough-looking rooster salt and pepper shakers I had inherited from one of my grandmothers helped Henry wrangle one little rogue who put up a fight. I really enjoyed coming up with the stories of their adventures.

My children went off to their holiday with their father that year, but before they left, I decided to wrap up Henry’s adventures with a note to them from him. I wrote a poem about the rogue elves, and how Santa had decided that they could live with my kids instead of returning to the North Pole.

And so, it became our tradition that every year, Henry would begin his adventures on December first. Every year, Henry would do something different. One year, he brought a different candy to the kids each morning. Another it was stickers. Still another year, he brought rebus puzzles (drawn by me, because obviously penguins don’t have thumbs). The solution to each puzzle was the name of a Christmas song. One year, he showed up a with a letter on a slip of paper each day. The kids collected these and taped them to a card. By Christmas, the letters spelled out the answer to a question about penguins that my son had wondered aloud a month or so prior while we watched a movie with penguins in it. Some years, Henry suggests activities each day. Both my children love music, and I’ve played and sang with them all their lives. My daughter is quite the musician, and we would often play a game where she would give me a letter of the alphabet and I’d think of a song title that started with that letter for us to listen to. So, in 2019, Henry showed up each day with a song to listen to. He started with “A” and worked his way to “Z” with song titles beginning with that letter. Each evening we’d listen to the song while I made dinner, and I’d also play other songs with titles starting with that day’s letter. I made a playlist of all these songs on Spotify, which I still sometimes play as I do chores.

Last year, Henry gave us a movie suggestion each day. For 2022, Henry also provided movie suggestions, but this time, they were all movies based on books, so each day’s recommendation might also inspire us to look up the relevant book (we’re all avid readers). Since both my teens have been into the Dune series lately, they loved the suggestion of the original Dune movie from the ’80s. They knew it was going to be goofy, and that was part of its charm.

The tradition has evolved so that on Christmas Eve, Henry moves to the side of a Santa-shaped bell that sits on the mantle during the holidays, which is also where we tend to set out cookies for Santa. Yes, my kids are certainly old enough to know the truth about Santa, but they indulge their crazy mom, who likes to keep the magic of Christmas alive by setting out cookies and milk, wrapping a few gifts that are from Santa, and leaving them cards from Santa by the empty cookie plate. And they know the truth behind Henry’s magic too, but every year, we partake of whatever adventures Henry has in store for us. Since that first note left by Henry in 2012 when the runaway elves were rounded up, Henry has always left a note for my kids that includes a poem. This is as much a challenge for me as figuring out what Henry will do each year. Each year I fret about Henry’s adventures, and then about what he’ll write. Yet, each year, I always come up with something on both counts. We have a zippered bag with envelopes of all notes from Henry and any puzzles or slips of paper that might have been associated with a given year’s adventures. We keep it with all our holiday decorations, and sometimes reminisce with it while decking the halls.

It’s hard to believe that little burned-out light bulb could be part of the wonder of Christmas for a pair of children, but he was indeed, when they were small. When the holiday decorations came out each year and we unpacked Henry, they would be so happy to see him! Now, as teens, they may think their mom is a bit silly, but going through the motions of Henry’s annual adventures is part of our Christmas tradition and gives us some structured quality time together that is set apart from anything else we might do throughout the rest of the year. He’s become quite important to me and is tied to their childhood in so many ways. If anything ever happened to that little recycled bulb, I would cry real tears! I told my daughter recently that when she and her brother are out on their own in this world, every December, so long as he’s still around to move, I will move Henry and text them each day with photos and stories of the penguin’s adventures. They will probably shake their heads, laugh, and roll their eyes (just as she did when I told her this and she knew that I meant it). But deep inside perhaps they’ll also remember how we managed to get through some rough times when they were kids, and how their mother loved them so much she created new stories and adventures every year just to make them smile. As I write this the kids are with their dad, and they won’t be home until a few days after Christmas. But when they return, a note with a poem which I have not written yet (that’s a task for later this evening) will be waiting, with love, from Henry.

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Happy holidays! I hope this story has made you smile. If you have your own unique holiday traditions, tell me about them in the comments. Thanks for reading!