Annual Advent: Traditional Christmas Calendar Builds Anticipation for Another Generation
- Valerie Thompson
- Dec 1, 2016
- 1 min read
For most, Black Friday and Cyber Monday mark the official start of the Christmas season. For our family, it comes when we break out a fifty-five-year-old pop-up die-cut paper Advent calendar. When I was growing up, my family had a simple oversized greeting-card-style version with a pine-tree illustration. It featured a thick, granular “snow” effect that helped thicken the lightweight card stock. My brother and I alternated days searching for the correct numbered door to open, revealing colorful drawings of candles, a wrapped present, an orange, slices of cake, and similar objects of the season in a countdown to that final oversized door to be opened on Christmas Eve.
Long before our son was born, I found at a tag sale the Santa-themed calendar pictured here. I initially worried that it might not survive continued use, but the annual tradition happily continues without a problem. A few years ago, he played with Advent apps on his iPad and insisted on an Advent LEGO toy, too. Those haven’t been played with in ages, but the original paper calendar remains one of our treasured holiday traditions.
According to Merry The’s Christmas Collection, our “Made in Denmark” calendar probably dates from around 1960 and was illustrated by the Danish couple Jørgen and Ely Ploufmann (E.J. Ploufmann).
Demonstration of the Advent calendar popping up
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