CHRISTMAS, with all its rituals and traditions, begins with the appearance of the Advent calendar. How well I remember stealing downstairs in my nightdress as a child on December 1 to prise open the cardboard door before the rest of the household was awake. Even now, I can visualise the candle behind number one, with its evergreen wreath and flame dusted with glitter. It wasn't a surprise because this was the same Advent calendar we'd had the year before, with the doors pressed firmly shut again. Yet, somehow, this familiarity didn't matter a jot; in fact, it was all part of the build-up, gently melding memories and nostalgia to last a lifetime.
Advent without a calendar to track the mounting excitement is unthinkable, yet, although the innovation has delighted children for generations, the tradition is not as old as you might think. As the historian Martin Johnes points out, Advent calendars, 'as do so many British Christmas traditions, have their roots outside the UK. They are an 'evolution of a practice found in Germany of counting down through the Christian festival of Advent towards Christmas,' he writes in Christmas and the British (2016).
Advent, from the Latin for arrival or coming, means the period of preparation for the birth of Our Lord. Pope Gregory the Great (in office 590-604) fixed the season of Advent at four weeks and thence grew the tradition of lighting a candle on each of the four Sundays of the period. In 19th-century Germany, observant Lutheran families would make a chalk mark on the door for every day in December until Christmas Eve. Many think the first modern Advent calendar we would recognise dates from 1851, when a Protestant bookseller created a wooden calendar with a devotional image for each day.
Denne historien er fra November 13, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 13, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Give it some stick
Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart
Paper escapes
Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024
For love, not money
This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn
A love supreme
Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different
Private views
One of the best ways-often the only way-to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that
Shhhhhh...
THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.
Mission impossible
Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story
When a perfect storm hits
Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals
Give the dog a bone
Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course
