How The Advent Calendar Can Be Meaningful Again I By Abigail Poh Lin Xian
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| Illustration By Shuen (@yeeeshuen) |
If you’ve visited a mall or scrolled through your social media feeds recently, you’ll have likely noticed that advent calendars are popping up everywhere. These days, it feels like everyone participates in this trend whenever the holiday season rolls around at the end of the year. It makes sense: the build up of anticipation and excitement of opening up a new surprise every single day, slowly leading up to the big event of Christmas, sounds like an incredibly fun and engaging concept. It essentially rewards someone for checking in every single day to see what the new day reveals. With the rise of social media and brand websites, even digital advent calendars have risen in popularity. But where did it all start?
While advent calendars were traditionally rumored to originate from a housewife who got tired of answering her children’s questions of when Christmas would arrive, this origin story has been debatable. Others have argued that the advent calendar originated from the practice of Protestant Christians in 19th century Germany marking the days leading down to Christmas through methods such as lighting a candle. This tradition would eventually manifest in commercially created calendars to count the days. The most popular form of advent calendar we recognize in the modern day was created by Gerhard Lang. He added doors that could be opened to his advent calendars sometime in the 1920s. He was inspired by his mother, who would handmake a calendar with 24 candies or cookies for him during the Christmas season in his childhood.
Over time, advent calendars became a highly popular present as they were so versatile, cementing this tradition as an integral part of celebrating the holiday in many countries. While they typically included a piece of chocolate for each day leading to Christmas, modern iterations can include anything from gourmet food to beauty products! Their extremely adaptable concept means there is an advent calendar for anyone out there: art lovers, Lego fans and even stationery enthusiasts can find something that suits their tastes.
These days, unique or popular advent calendars often go viral on social media as the end of the year rolls around, especially as content creators and influencers feature them in their videos. However, the popularity of advent calendars on these platforms has proven to be a double edged sword, as the idea has become highly commercialized over time. Various companies and brands have hopped onto the bandwagon to sell more products during the holiday shopping season through capitalizing on the combined power of social media virality and the advent calendar tradition. Virtually every major brand releases an advent calendar yearly, no matter the quality or worth of the products within. This promotes overspending and chasing trends without care for something deeper and more meaningful, even ignoring practicality as not everything in the calendar would be useful. Even worse, it has been found time and time again that many high end brands are selling their customers short by including items far below the retail value of their advent calendars, essentially using the guise of the unknown surprise to upsell their products. More so, the increasingly elaborate packaging designed solely to market these fancy calendars contributes to loads of plastic pollution as their mass produced contents are more often than not thrown out once the holiday season is over. With all these issues combined, the advent calendar seems to have lost the spirit of its original purpose.
That being said, advent calendars can still be something important to mark the start of the Christmas atmosphere when December rolls around. After all, the holiday season is all about connecting with loved ones and having genuine moments together. Making a homemade advent calendar for a family member or friend could be a way of reclaiming this tradition. Instead of buying a typical advent calendar, making a unique one and adding creative DIY crafts, sweet messages or home baked goods for your loved ones could add a lovely homemade touch, creating a memorable and much appreciated gift. Buying a handmade advent calendar from a small business or artist can also help us to connect to its historical roots of personalized charm.
This holiday season, it’s important to take a step back and figure out how we can celebrate more meaningfully instead of getting caught up in the hustle and bustle of gifting culture. The humble advent calendar can become a way for us to connect meaningfully no matter who we are and how we celebrate. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
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