When I was small, we were only allowed paper advent calendars featuring religious tableaux. Stables in Bethlehem; cathedrals. That sort of thing.
Picture the Dickensian scene: my siblings and I would excitedly rush to the kitchen every morning to open our little window and find a mere picture of dove or an angel. It was only when I went to boarding school that the thrilling world of chocolate advent calendars was revealed because pupils would give them to one another, although I was a greedy teenager and had usually eaten all my chocolates by the third day of December.
These days, advent calendars have almost nothing to do with Advent and quite a lot to do with bath oil and mini bottles of perfume. Liberty opened the waiting list for their much-feted advent calendar in July; it costs £275 this year and contains items including an eye cream and a La Mer lip balm. Very holy. But it’s not just beauty advent calendars now. Paxton and Whitfield are offering a cheese advent calendar and Fortnum’s is flogging a Scotch whisky advent calendar. You can buy pork crackling advent calendars, and advent calendars stuffed with jam miniatures, and coffee. You can buy advent calendars for your pets. Although first prize for the advent calendar least likely to get the Archbishop of Canterbury’s approval should probably go to LoveHoney’s £79 ‘Enjoy Advent Calendar’, which includes intimate items best left to your imagination, and some wipes. Tis the season to be hygienic, everyone!
We have the Germans to thank for the practice of counting down the days until Christmas. They started it in the 19thcentury, marking the days off on the wall or a religious picture with chalk. Hey presto: 120 years or so later we can now celebrate the approach of the birth of Christ with a bedroom accessory. Honestly, isn’t December tiring enough already?
Paper, I strongly believe, remains the most charming option. You can find pretty, inexpensive ones featuring shepherds and Wise Men and so on via a company called, appropriately, Traditional Advent Calendars. Alternatively, you can find quite posh paper advent calendars on stately home websites. The Chatsworth website has a one of the house all decorated for Christmas. Blenheim has another, featuring the palace covered in snow. The brilliant cartoonist Alison Gardiner has done one of Highgrove featuring a labrador and a pheasant. I don’t imagine either of those were in Bethlehem, but painted animals — in my honest opinion — are more festive than body creams and furry handcuffs.
Country Life's annual (paper) Advent Calendar issue is on sale for one week only, from November 26.
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