Another door opens

Whether they contain traditional Christmas scenes, child-pleasing chocolates or deeply decadent beauty treats, Advent calendars ensure the first flutters of anticipation for the festivities, says Flora Watkins

- Flora Watkins

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.