T-Minus 24 and Counting

One holiday tradition at our house is using an advent calendar to count down the days to Christmas. As soon as our son was old enough to eat chocolates, his Oma sent him the first one setting the trend for years to come. Over the last decade and a half we have accumulated several reusable models that we take for a spin each year.

This countdown calendar has been with Jeff since he was about seven years old. (Yes, that is quite a long time!) It was a gift from his Sunday school teacher. The poem, which is printed on a piece of card stock and glued to a circle of felt, reads:
December first to Christmas is the longest time of the year.
Seems as though old Santa never will appear.
How many days till Christmas?
It's mighty hard to count!
So this little candy ribbon will tell the right amount.
Untie a candy every night when the sandman casts his spell,
And Christmas Eve will be here by the time you reach the bell.
The "ribbon" is a strip of felt with small lengths of yarn knotted through to tie on a piece of candy. Miniature candy canes or anything wrapped (like the taffy we have this year) work well on this calendar which features a little jingle bell at the tip. This seems fairly simple to make and would be an excellent craft for parents or grandparents with young kids around. (I've been toying with reworking the poem and making a semester countdown for the teachers in my department. I haven't come up with the exact wording yet, but the idea seems fun.)

Here's another calendar that comes from a craft project, though this one is quite a bit more complicated. Jeff's mom made this, which combines two of our favorite icons - music and cats - several years ago. It came as one of those preprinted patterns on a bolt in the fabric store. While I've seen many other Christmas crafts on fabric (including some darling aprons, tree skirts, and ornaments), I've never seen another advent calendar like this one. Each day has its own little pocket with its own little musical instrument cut-out that matches the picture of the kitty playing the instrument. There is a large pocket across the bottom to hold the instruments as they are removed from their specific days. This is a favorite holiday decoration that we hang each year.

This calendar was also a gift from Jeff's mom, though not home made. Although it looks like wood, it is actually very heavy gauge cardboard. The drawers reverse to create a snowman scene. So, as the days go by, the numbers go away and create a whole new decoration. In its original state each drawer contained a piece of chocolate. Now, we hang it every year and fill it with myriad items ranging from pieces of candy to state quarters to small toys from the party store. (A bag of pinata goodies works well for this kind of thing.) Of course, the older our son has gotten the more frequently it is filled with his favorite candy - though he'd probably like the money more!



Of course, last but not least, is this year's traditional chocolate countdown. While some of them are pretty sedate (like this one), we've found imported advent calendars at World Market that create new pictures by fastening the opened "door" to the front of the calendar. One even had an outdoor manger scene on the outside and each day slowly morphed the picture to the inner manger scene with baby Jesus finishing the picture on December 24. I have to admit, we haven't seen anything that elaborate in recent years, but when we lived in Las Vegas there seemed to be a wider selection. No matter how plain or fancy, though, advent calendars can be a lot of fun for the young or the young at heart.