Have you got an Advent calendar this year?  

I have quite a few – I keep them from year to year but usually get a new one each year too… so I have rather a lot now.  This year’s is a wooden train – it has three carriages each containing little drawers – my friends have stuffed these with treats—one for each day of Advent!

My favourite are the oldest ones – these are European – well I think originally German – in design.  They tend to show old fashioned ‘snow scenes’ in middle Europe villages.  They are ‘classic’ (or so I thought until very recently) in that they do NOT have sweeties or chocolates just a door for each date form 1-24 December.  These doors open onto a picture that makes sense in to big scene but also offers another step towards Christmas or rather Christmas Eve.  I must admit that I thought chocolates in Advent calendars were very recent inventions (of some confectionary manufacturer) but a little research suggests that I was wrong. 

The origin of the Advent calendar can be traced back to the 19th century. The earliest seem to be from the protestant areas of Germany.  They were based around chalk lines for every day in December until Christmas Eve made in religious families. The first known had-crafted Advent calendar was made in the year 1851.  Other early styles were the Advent clock or the Advent candle - a candle for each of the 24 days until Christmas, like today’s Advent wreath in some churches.   In 1902 a Christian bookshop in Hamburg published a Christmas Clock. . In 1904 an Advent Calendar was inserted in the newspaper "Neues Tagblatt Stuttgart" as a gift for their readers.  Another competing claim to be ‘the first printed Advent Calendar’, although without windows to open, published in 1908. This Calendar was named "Christmas-Calendar" or "Munich Christmas-Calendar". Esther Gajek says that the first printed specimen with opening doors or windows was made in 1908 by a Swabian parishioner, Gerhard Lang (born 1881 in Maulbronn, Germany -died in 1974).  Mr Lang recalled that that when he was a child his mother made him an Advent calendar with 24 "Wibbele" (little candies) that were stuck onto cardboard backing.

At the beginning of the 20th Gerhard Lang produced the first Advent Calendars with little doors to open and Advent calendar as we know it today started a triumphal way around the globe. Before the Second World War terminated the success of this German tradition and Lang had to close his, he had produced about 30 different designs.  After World War II many companies began printing and selling Advent and Christmas calendars. Advent Calendars filled with small chocolates were available in 1958.

If you want the fun of the countdown to Christmas Eve without the expense of a purchase or without the trashy chocolate taste that some cheap calendars now deliver try these alternatives. Make your own Advent calendar by downloading ‘pdf’ files to print out:

http://www.janbrett.com/christmas_treasury_advent_calendar.htm

There is one to sew for yourself or friends.  This one has pockets to put small toys or candies in to sew:

http://www.sewing.org/html/advent_calendar.html

Or – easiest of all try “Around the world Advent” quiz from Kent junior school—go to

www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Xmas/calendar

Happy Advent

Peng Guin