Did you get advent calendars as a kid?
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It seems like advent calendars are everywhere now (online at least). As a kid, I donβt remember even knowing what an advent calendar was. In fact, I first remember really noticing them when I moved to Japan. I remember another English teacher talked about having her students make them for a cross-cultural activity, and I would see them in import shops where they were presented as an example of a western Christmas tradition. I remember just assuming that it was a British thing.
But evidently thatβs not the case.
Were advent calendars part of your Christmas tradition growing up?
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We had one every year growing up and we kids took turns opening the little flaps.
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It's just a countdown to Christmas. Each flap reveals a treat of some variety. They have one for Fountain Pen Inks. lol
I was raised Catholic and I had to google it. lol
Advent is the Christian liturgical season of waiting, prayer, and preparation leading up to Christmas. Deriving from the Latin word adventus, meaning "arrival" or "coming," it marks the beginning of the new church year in Western Christianity.
IOW they start repeating the same cherry picked verses from their book.
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My maternal great-aunt was a Catholic nun; she sent me an Advent calendar when I was a kid. It got re-used every year.
I went down to the basement and dug it out of my box of precious pimentos. It was printed in "Western Germany". It must be from the 1960s.
These days Advent calendars are way more interesting. 24 bottles of wine, 24 kinds of chocolate, and one I hadn't seen before...
...
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@wtg your 1960s is charming!
Also, I like the jam one!
Re origins, as I poke around online, it seems maybe they were common in Germany, doesn't it. (My family is Italian-American, so Catholic, but I think maybe it wasn't a thing in the Italian-American community back then)
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I had one pretty much annually as a kid (in the 80s). It was made of cardboard and filled with terrible waxy chocolate in vaguely Christmassy shapes, and I loved it.
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More interesting? Well, yeah.
But decidedly more commercialized.
That's my objection to them becoming "a thing", actually.
Your old one is gorgeous.
I'm for freedom of religion 100%, truly.
But, for me, spiritual practice and humility compliment each other, and as much as I like it (and I do; I'd be lying if I said I didn't), there isn't much humility is commercialism.
Also, how strange it is that we're seeing products that are expensive, along with inflation in real time, presented to us as "normal" and "aspirational" at the exact time the middle classes are in severe decline, and the working class has a minimum wage of $7 (in 2026).
What's up with that?
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It's just a countdown to Christmas. Each flap reveals a treat of some variety. They have one for Fountain Pen Inks. lol
I was raised Catholic and I had to google it. lol
Advent is the Christian liturgical season of waiting, prayer, and preparation leading up to Christmas. Deriving from the Latin word adventus, meaning "arrival" or "coming," it marks the beginning of the new church year in Western Christianity.
IOW they start repeating the same cherry picked verses from their book.
It's just a countdown to Christmas. Each flap reveals a treat of some variety. They have one for Fountain Pen Inks. lol
I was raised Catholic and I had to google it. lol
Advent is the Christian liturgical season of waiting, prayer, and preparation leading up to Christmas. Deriving from the Latin word adventus, meaning "arrival" or "coming," it marks the beginning of the new church year in Western Christianity.
IOW they start repeating the same cherry picked verses from their book.
Thatβs sorta what I meant. I could get you to flaps with treats behind them, if for no other reason than I see them advertised. But any meaning beyond the obvious (Christmas in x days) was beyond me.
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I had one pretty much annually as a kid (in the 80s). It was made of cardboard and filled with terrible waxy chocolate in vaguely Christmassy shapes, and I loved it.
I had one pretty much annually as a kid (in the 80s). It was made of cardboard and filled with terrible waxy chocolate in vaguely Christmassy shapes, and I loved it.
I don't know if anyone remembers this, or if they're still around, but we had a chocolate maker called Palmer, that made Christmas candy. It was the lowest of the low. I mean you could tell it was the worst quality imaginable 50 years ago, when candy was "real" and not a chemical spill. My guess is they're still here, and that the chocolate is actually some kind processed "food product" colored to look like chocolate. I really wouldn't be surprised after seeing how Nabisco Ritz crackers are made, how fast food is made now, how processed food is made. Even "luxury" chocolate brands are crap.
I wish I could have chocolate from Perugia or Belgium or from anywhere artisans truly care about what they're making.
FTR, I'm no Christmas Grinch, just Halloween.
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I had one pretty much annually as a kid (in the 80s). It was made of cardboard and filled with terrible waxy chocolate in vaguely Christmassy shapes, and I loved it.
@dolmansaxlil Those are the ones I buy myself now.
The graphics are usually great.
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