Advent Calendar Facts

1. The history of Advent calendars can be traced to the 19th century. German Lutherans started to count down to Christmas by lighting candles or making chalk marks on wooden walls or doors (24 for each day till Christmas), rubbing off one by one every evening. Typically the roles were divided - parents draw the lines on the last evening in November and kids rubbed them off starting with the first day in December.

A bit later other Christians adopted and expanded the custom. Some Catholics even today cultivate the habit of putting one feather in a crib each day of December until the 24th, so Jesus could be born in a soft bed.

4. A newspaper Neues Tagblatt in Stuttgart inserted a printed Advent calendar as a gift to their readers in 1904. This started a tradition of giving Advent calendars to others as a holiday gift.

By the way, the idea for this calendar was given by Gerhard Lang (1881-1974), who was inspired by his mother's habit of giving small sweet treats to her son every day from the beginning of December to Christmas. How did she do that? She baked 24 cookies and sewn them on the cardboard on 1 December. Little Gerhard was allowed to cut one out every evening and eat it.

This calendar was made of two pieces. One had a template with 24 squares, with a verse in each one of them. The other had 24 pictures matching the dimensions of the squares. Children could cut one picture each day, read a verse from one square (they were numbered), and stick pictures in corresponding places.

5. Only four years later Lang already had a part in the printing company Reichhold & Lang which started mass production of printed Advent calendars. The first was designed by Richard Ernst Kepler (1851-1927) and was titled Im Lande des Christkinds.

New variations of advent calendars were added every year:

• shapes of Christmas trees or Advent cottages,
• windows and doors that could be opened,
• movable, sliding, or rotating parts,
• etc.

Officially the first window Advent calendar with 19 (!) windows starts on 6 December - on the day of St Nicklaus. This puts it in another subgroup - among so-called Nicklaus calendars. It was made by Dora Baum (1881-1949), titled Christkindleins Haus, and published by Reichhold & Lang around 1920 (could be a year or two later).

Other publishers started with their production of Advent calendars too. Due to harsh competition, Gerhard Lang was forced to stop making Advent calendars in the 1930s, just before World War II and shortages of paper began. The production of Advent calendars, which were, by the way for some time also used as Nazi propaganda, was banned.

6. It was Lang (who else?) who first added chocolates to his Advent calendars and others soon followed his example. Still, the already mentioned war and shortages present even after the war delayed the expansion of today's most popular version of Advent Calendars - ones filled with small chocolates.

7. Today numerous brands use Advent calendars to promote their names (and different products), making a few bucks on the side as well. Well, not just a few bucks, considering the most expensive Advent calendars in the market today can cost way over 10 thousand dollars!

Apart from sweets, you can buy Advent calendars with toys, drinks, beauty products, jewelry, ... Everything that can be presented in small, aesthetic, and possibly overpriced form, useful to support a seller's brand, is packed in 24 interconnected boxes. As you may expect, the adult industry offers its versions too. Even the national lotteries found a way to entertain their customers with the idea. For instance, a few years ago a scratch Advent calendar (24 fields to be scratched, different prizes depending on codes found under the cover) in Denmark was a huge success.

8. 24 days Can Also Be 25 And Can Go Up To 31! Or 22?

The advent season always starts on the first Sunday after November 26, which means it can start between 27 November and 3 December. It always ends o Christmas Eve (24 December), effectively leading to the length of Advent between 22 or 28 days.

Calendar producers didn't want to complicate their lives, so they adopted the 24 days format, always starting on 1 December, making printing easier, which further simplifies the selling season.

But there is always somebody who wants to improve the perfection - some added the 25th window representing Christmas, which means we can sometimes find Advent calendars with 25 days as well. Improvements in printing machines supported this idea.

And then the holidays evolved, people of different religions mixed, celebrations changed, and businesses adapted. Because some prefer to celebrate New Year and not Christmas, Advent calendars with 31 squares (one for each day in December) came to market.

9. Why being limited to December only?

Advent calendars proved profitable and merchants started looking for similar products that could bring some additional income too.

Today we can find Birthday Advent Calendars, Halloween Advent Calendars, Ramadan Advent Calendars, Valentine Advent Calendars, ...

10. While Advent calendars became a mass-production multi-billion worth business with more and more harmful impact on nature (think about the plastics, transport, etc.) it's probably time to make a step back.

Or two.

Advent time is the time when we all should find some peace in this hectic world. Let's stop a bit and share our most precious possession (time!) with people we really care about. Maybe we could make a calendar tailored to our very specific tastes and values? Possibly with one good deed for each day till Christmas?

Tell our kids one fairy each evening of the Advent season, for example, starting with Cinderella, or The Sleeping Beauty, and finish strong with Christmas Carol?

Or print an Advent calendar template where we can add our personal content? Or print a black and white version of the Advent calendar and color it together with our children?

Or ...?

Enjoy the Advent season and Merry Christmas!