Countdown to Christmas

Special Report

Countdown to Christmas

The Origins of the Advent Calendar

I loved the arrival of the Advent Calendar when I was growing up. Every year we had a cardboard one from Woolworths, printed with a Christmas scene, each little door opening to reveal a tiny picture such as a teddy, a reindeer or a bauble. My brother and I would take it turns to be ‘odds’ or ‘evens’. I always wanted to be ‘evens’ so I could open the Christmas Eve door which was always slightly larger and had a picture of the Nativity or Santa on the roof of a snow-covered house. When some of the kids at school started boasting about their ‘chocolate’ Advent Calendars we begged my dad for one and eventually he gave in. We were disappointed when we realised that once the chocolate was removed there was no picture, just an empty space where the chocolate had been. The ‘open’ chocolate Advent calendar had all the charm of a mouth with missing teeth. We never asked for another one. The Advent calendar originates from Germany. It began with German Protestants marking the days of Advent either by burning a candle or marking a wall with chalk. This morphed into the practice of hanging a devotional image every day and ultimately to the creation of the first known wooden Advent calendar in 1851. The first printed calendars appeared just after 1900. Small doors were added in the 1920s. Often short bible verses were hidden behind the doors alongside the picture. During the World War ll cardboard rationing put a stop to advent calendars but when hostilities ceased Richard Sellmar of Stuttgart obtained a permit from the US officials to begin printing and selling them again. He designed a calendar based on a German winter town scene. By the 1950s, they were mass-produced and affordable and exported across the world. Chocolate Advent Calendars might seem like the new kids on the block but they have been around longer than you might think. Fry and Son produced the first chocolate Advent calendar as early as 1958 and Cadbury popularised them in the Seventies. Lego got in on the action in 1998 with a set that contained a Santa Claus minifigure and simple brickmade structures, which could be finally reassembled into a bigger model or scene. They’ve produced at least one every year since. My oldest teen begs me for their Harry Potter one every year. Over the past decade Advent calendars have gone ‘luxury’ and become a key marketing strategy for many companies. This started around 2010 when Selfridges department store launched a beautythemed Advent calendar with the cosmetics giant L’Oréal. It was filled with product samples from fragrances to body creams. There is now a advent calendar catering for pretty much every taste, most of them marketed at adults rather than children. There are advent calendars for gin-lovers, tea-lovers, and nail-polish addicts; there is even one for pets, and they are not cheap! Some cost upwards of £150! It’s all a worlds away from Sellmar-Verlag, now run by Richard’s grandchildren, which still produces traditional card Advent calendars to this day. The company’s most popular advent calendar is still Richard’s original design, called Little Town. A few years ago my husband (knowing my love of traditional Advent Calendars) bought me a wooden one which is reusable and is a beautiful Christmas decoration in its own right...in fact my teens actually argue over which one of them will inherit it when I die (that’s the festive spirit guys!). However you choose to mark the occasion...Happy Advent!