Advent Calendars

[PersonaNonGarter]

Oh God I am sick of receiving ‘It’s Here!’ emails from beauty brands/garden catalogues/whatever telling me their advent calendar is now in stock.

Sod off with your over-priced, bad-for-the-environment tat. No, I don’t want a miniature candle, tiny sample size lip balm, or weird plastic trinkets. Why would I want your one-chocolate-a-day when I could just buy a box for a quarter of the price?

I like to shop but this vacuous consumerism is getting to me. Urgh. Sheep. When will it be over.

All these vacuous threads are getting to me.

OP I am with you. More plastic shit that no one needs. And more encouragement to spend more and more money. Why is Christmas not enough for people? Now you need presents for the whole month and Christmas Eve boxes and elf on a shelf. Why not make normal life nicer rather than pinning everything on one festival and stoking rampant capitalism.

To be fair a lot of the calendars are now reusable tins or made of thick cardboard.
Depends on the calendar, some is tat and some isn't.

You could say it about pretty much anything we buy really.

I agree OP. I don't even like buying my kids the chocolate ones. I did enjoy the old picture type back in the day. At Primary school a pupil was selected each day to open one and we would all ooh and ahh at the festive scene behind the window. These days it's over stimulating, unnecessary shite. Each to their own though!

I just want the cheapest chocolate advent calendar going, Cadbury or Galaxy chocolate. Though I am keeping my toddler away from having one as long as I can.

We have a reusable one where each day you slot a picture of Christmas food onto a table which ends up laid out like a huge feast, which we enjoy getting out each year.

@PersonaNonGarter I bought a beer one for DH last year, he usually has 3/4 cans over a Friday and Saturday night, so the calendar introduced him to new ales/IPAs, it meant we didn't buy any in the weekly shopping and he had plenty left over for the Christmas period. The box was recycled and recyclable. No additional consumption.

@LadyLothbrook

I agree OP. I don't even like buying my kids the chocolate ones. I did enjoy the old picture type back in the day. At Primary school a pupil was selected each day to open one and we would all ooh and ahh at the festive scene behind the window. These days it's over stimulating, unnecessary shite. Each to their own though!

Yes there's something particularly lovely about those little picture ones with nice little drawings on them. :) I have a couple I put out each year.

It was nice back in 2013 when the beauty advent calendar was a fairly newish thing. The Liberty and the Jo Malone and the Diptyque advent calendars were very exciting. Now not so much as every store seem to have one. I have seen some advent calendars advertised in August 😂
I still would be happy to get a high end one this year but the heavy marketing totally spoiled them and I agree that it’s just annoying to see them everywhere now.

loving the lego ones this year already bought 2 as gifts!

The gin advent calendar was great last year, a good way to kickstart my day working from home but so much more reasonable than opening a normal sized bottle of the stuff.

But....it's here!

Don't see anything wrong with Advent calenders, it's something to brighten your morning a little.
I need my cheap Christmas chocolate fix.

Of course they're unnecessary. But then nor is Christmas or gifts at all. I'm not going to have some strop and call people sheep just because they follow a god and a called a flock. But there's a lot of greener than thou shit. Just quietly get on with skipping the fest of pointlessness

But then nor is Christmas or gifts at all.

Krampus on you😱 blasphemy

What amused me was the "Now you can get advent calendars for birthdays". Um... you may be able to get countdown calendars, but unless your birthday is at the end of Advent, then it won't be an Advent calendar.

We love the elf.

But the elf doesn't need to cost anything beyond the initial outlay (5 euro in our case and he's reporting for his 5th year of duty in December).

Here we have a very popular vodka soda drink called Neutrals and they did one. It was just the regular case but with numbers printed on it for an extra $20 and they sold out. Found the promotion of daily alcohol consumption a bit

Personally I like the old style pretty painted ones and have made several refillable ones for people.

@NotPersephone

I agree with you. Advent calendars used to be (a) for kids and (b) contain Christmasy pictures (and later chocolate). Now it's just rampant chasing of cash to buy candles/beauty shite/wine/whatever as if we weren't all going to be skint by 1 Jan anyway. It's just normalising the completely unnecessary in my (admittedly Grinch-y) view.

I am SO far from being a lentil weaver, but this year I've bought DS 24 second hand books and I'm going to stick one in a bag with a number on each morning during advent and leave it by his bed for when he wakes up.

That’s a great idea

I make fabric advent calendars with pockets that can be refilled with all sorts of things, usually chocolate, toy cars, or candles. Some of them have been used for years. I’m doing one for a vegan friend; each pocket will contain appropriate chocolate or other small edible treat.

I was going to have a beauty one but then I thought about all the plastic and decided not to bother. I have had them in previous years though - eg Arran Aromatics, Elemis and Lumene.

I'm sewing one for my daughter to keep for years to come. Most of the days will have chocolate etc in but a few of the days have an extra surprise- hot chocolate stirrer, lip balm, magic flannel, cookie cutter to bake, ticket to see FC etc.

When I was young we had very little money and an old lady from our church used to wrap up 24 mini parcels for me to open, just small things like a pencil, little toy or socks etc. It meant so much to me and spread the fun of Christmas. Advent calendar are quite an affordable way to treat children in many ways, since lots of the activities can be expensive.

I just want one that covers actual Advent, not just 1-24 December