To think if it has 12 windows...

[minniemummy0]

And it refers to the 12 days of Christmas, it’s NOT an advent calendar?!! Advent is 24 days.... CHRISTMAS is 12 days (from Xmas day to the 5th of Jan, day before epiphany). So are you supposed to use these 12 doored advent calendars between 25th dec-5th Jan??

I think it’s just a cheapo way of reducing the amount of presents that manufacturers put in their “calendars”?!

Absolutely. It has started to irrationally annoy me actually.

YANBU. And actually I'm so over all these expensive tat filled advent calendars. Some now only containing 12 pieces of tat at twice the price. What happened to opening up the door to see a picture of a candle? Or a lantern? Or mittens? Or Rudd Gullit sitting on a shed?

But didn't advent calanders always have 40 windows? Or am I loosing my memory in my ripe old age?

ttbb Not in the last 45 years they didn't.

Yep, totally over novelty grabby tat-filled advent calendars.
Got sucked into thinking DD 7 might like the Lego Friends one but then remembered she's 7 and prefers a little picture of something Christmassy and 3g of cheap chocolate.

YANBU. Forget the debate over overpriced tat. This is the real issue.

If it’s a 12 days of Christmas calendar to be opened from the 25th to the 5th, then it isn’t an advent calendar. If it is an advent calendar to be opened before Christmas, then why the fuck has it only got 12 doors.

Ttbb I’ve never seen one though it would make sense religiously. I’m used to 24 or 25 days. Either way, 12 doesn’t cut it!!

This has always annoyed me ... why would I start my advent on the 13th of December ? Weird, I want 25 deal chocolates shaped like penguins, stars and mangers so that I can eat chocolate before 9am for once.

“I think it’s just a cheapo way of reducing the amount of presents that manufacturers put in their “calendars”?!”

Well, with the Zoella one, yes... but if it’s a fancy one from say Jo Malone, it is a way of keeping the calendars affordable without the contents being so small as to be useless/not a treat.

Are “Christmas calendars” a thing? Do they exist? If not, then I think it’s reasonable that they are called Advent calendars, as that the tern that people understand as meaning “object with little doors that you open to get treats”.

It does sound a little like one of those times when you feel secretly cross that other people don’t know as much as you do, OP.

I remember when you could buy the cheap chocolate ones that went up to NYE!

Ah well, I'm not that old (but I was raised in Australia so maybe they did it the old fashioned way-as they do most things- when I was a child).

What do you mean it has always annoyed you? I've never seen an advent calendar with 12 doors! Ever! Are you sure the other 12 doors are not round the the other side? I have a wooden advent chest and after the first 12 days it needs to be turned around to reveal the other half of doors.

There are beauty ones with 12 doors.... I assumed they were to be given as a Xmas present and opened each day to the 6th Jan.... so no, they shouldn’t be called Advent!

If they don’t exist you could make them a thing. Advertisers manage to make all sorts of things a thing it would be possible.

Sadly, I think you are probably right about this coming about because people think the term Advent calendar means ‘object with little doors that you open’ and they lack the cultural literacy to think it through and realise the contradiction.

But good news people, the price is being cut by 50%! It's still a pile of shit i wouldn't pay £1 for let alone £25 or £50. There's a brilliant you tube video critique of the contents, basically ripping it to shreds.

Are parents seriously happy for their pre-teens to be slavishly following these image obsesssed nonentities?

I think you're supposed to have both- an advent calendar and a 12 days of Christmas calendar. To prolong the tidal wave of tat. There's a Pringles 12 days one- who even needs a miniature tub of Pringles every day til 5th Jan? The house is full of Christmas food until the diet starts on Jan 1st!

It's just grotesque consumerism. Buy it, then buy more.