Elf on the Shelf Non-Religious Option?

Sorry this one is a bit late. I had been too lazy to take a picture for this post.

Being an Atheist, it is important for me not to include anything about Jesus in our Holiday celebrations. She is much to young to be able to understand that type of information. Because of this I normally pre-read any holiday books before choosing them to read to our 2 year old. Unfortunately, I did not do this with the Elf on the Shelf book. On page one page there was a line that read "I won't get to tell him that you've said your prayers". We decided to take that part out and change the words to "I won't get to tell him that you've said your pleases and thank yous". As you can see I used my new label maker to make it appear seamless. ;)

Another thing I didn't really like about the book was that the elf seems like a tattle tale. We chose to have our elf be more of a sneaky jokester, similar to a leprechaun. Hopefully by next year I can find a better book to introduce Sparkly!

What do you like or don't like about the Elf on the Shelf? Have any great Elf on the Shelf activities to share? Put it all in the comments!