I have an urgent question: Where did all these gnomes come from?

I'm talking gift-shop gnomes, not garden gnomes. Soft and haunted. Oversized, conical Christmas hats covering everything but their bulbous noses and snowy ZZ Top beards. Bodies thick like baked potatoes. The thin, floppy lower extremities of someone who has skipped leg day for decades. Sometimes, no legs at all, just a round rump or oversized shoes protruding straight from the bum.

Why are these gnomes everywhere? Yes, I know you're going to write and say that gnomes are nothing new, that you've been collecting them for years, and where have I been on this gnome thing? It's entirely possible I'm experiencing a frequency illusion, a gnome Baader-Meinhof moment, and ever since I've started to notice the gnomes, I can't stop seeing them.

Or am I right? Have the felty, knitty variety of Christmas gnomes slowly replaced Santa Claus as the chosen mythical bon vivant of holiday decor? They perch atop all store shelves in December, not-stare-staring with their non-eye-eyes, piles upon piles of gnomes multiplying inside unsuspecting TJ Maxx and HomeGoods stores like Gremlins who have been fed past midnight. Decorative signs and whimsical sweaters abound: GNOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. HANGING WITH MY GNOMIES. TAKE ME GNOME TONIGHT.

For the holiday influencer, Target has aesthetic gray fabric gnomes. One gnome from Pottery Barn is just a disembodied head. A set of Amazon gnome heads light up, luring innocents into their night swept clutches. Gnomes! Hugging candy canes, topping trees, sledding, standing alarmingly still, laughing their muffled, demented laughs because they have no mouths of which to speak!

I did a little research to learn about gnomes. Let me preface this by saying that Christmas traditions are bizarre all over the world. Like, let's pause and remember that Americans widely circulate a story in which a senior citizen with excess subcutaneous fat flies through the night sky on a sleigh pulled by a sassy pack of caribou, then squeezes his considerable frame down chimneys, and, I guess, jimmies apartment door locks in order to leave presents for children, but only good children. Bad children get literal coal. They get a nonrenewable energy resource. That will show them!

OK, so now that we've established that there is no good Christmas folklore, let's discuss gnomes. Christmas gnomes are Scandinavian, translated to "nisse" or "tomte." They are friendly goblins who live on farms. According to Scandification, a thorough Scandinavian guide with a winning name, gnomes originate from the souls of the farm's first owner: "Inhabitants throughout Scandinavia had to live through dark, long winters. The Scandinavian gnomes sprang from the imaginations of people who wanted to feel less alone during these cold months."

I get it! I would also hallucinate gnomes when isolated on a farm in the dead of a European winter while eating the last of the bread! Absofruitly! Much like Santa, gnomes are thought to bring presents to children, raising yet more questions of physics.

That's a lovely origin story, I suppose. It's just that Americans had to go and overdo it as usual by pumping gnomes into every possible nook of monetary gain, causing a one-person backlash (me). We also don't know when to cancel our television series.

I don't trust these gnomes, not in this quantity, not one bit. To be clear, I don't trust Santa either and don't want him in my house looking at my stuff. But I feel confident that I could take him out if he started to act sus. Like, if Santa started poking into my medicine cabinets, I could wang him behind the knees with a bottle of St. Bernardus and call for help.

Gnomes? By the dozen? Popping all around the living room at midnight with their spooky tater-tot bods and leaving beard hair on the rug? I could not defend myself against this attack. I'd be laid out, tied to a chair with evergreen branches and holly while the gnomes robbed me of all my porridge. It's simply a numbers game.

In conclusion, I've got one more jolly-sweater phrase to consider for this holiday season: JUST SAY GNOME.

(I'm so sorry.)

Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on Twitter or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

Photo credit: Couleur at Pixabay