As we are over a week into December and even deeper into the Christmas season it has got me thinking about a tradition that I always hold very close to my heart because as a kid who was more worried about how not to slip down a snowy hill and start rolling like a boulder, I didn’t have the available mental capacity to know how many more days there are left.
I am of course talking about the Advent Calendar.
But to be honest, for the amount of people that uses one of these things I don’t think anyone knows the history of these things. And because I love Christmas and I am currently waiting on a big Fat Man Review, I was very curious.
And to be honest what I first thought was that the Advent calendar was some ancient sacred tradition that could date back all the way to the days of St Peter.
Instead it was a group of German Protestants in the 1850s that were bored and tried to make an interesting way to count down the days until Christs birth, most likely for his fat friend that had to worry about slipping down a hill and causing an avalanche.
People would originally decorate their “Christmas Clocks” with candles as a way to show it.
They would stay mainly in Germany and actually were very hated by everyone else when a German Newspaper photographed one that was adorned with some, well piece of crap symbols. Until after the war ended companies rebranded the calendar back to its Christmas praising glory.
However advent calendars stayed in a realm of something that was stupid and you wouldn’t see it anywhere. That was until in 1953 president Dwight Eisenhower was photographed opening one for his grandchildren.
During the following year is when we see the first iterations of chocolate filled calendars.
And as you could probably guess once chocolate was introduced, the “Most Athletic” country had to have it for their little fat angels.
Over the years many different companies would take their crack at this blessed idea. Now all were cool but none really took center stage until a small company founded in Denmark thought they could add their product to it. And ever since that day the Lego advent calendar is a sign of manliness. There are so many variants though, you have M&Ms, Candy, random toys, and heck one that always brought me a lot of joy was my grandmas where you would get a new animal each day to decorate the small cabin.
Bottom line is this is a tradition that is one that I still always feel happy when my younger family members wake up excited to see what today is. And you always have to watch out and make sure they don’t try and open more than one that day.
And the best part is that they arent just for kids, companies have gotten very creative in what inventions they make. I have seen many, and I mean many advent calendars
directed towards adults. One of the cooler ones I have seen are by various beer companies where each day is a new style of beer, or in my opinion the coolest one is the Red Bull advent calendar, which sadly we cannot get in the US but is something that I will be searching for for a long time.
