Chocolate advent calendars - am I being scrooge?

[Hadeda]

DDs love those chocolate advent calendars. I'm not so keen...

1. Not keen on them having a chocolate a day for 24 days, and overloaded with sweet stuff at that time of year anyway.

1. Advent calendars are meant to be a count down to the "big day" - i.e. day Jesus was born. So the message is not really "chocolate sweets chocolate" (we are a religious family, this fits in with family views anyway so doesn't surprise the DC).

I prefer to get advent calendars with a picture behind each door, and you can find really lovely ones.

BUT.... am I being scrooge? Should I just get the chocolate one since they really do love that, and see if I can find one with a vaguely relevant picture (i.e. not Frozen!). Or stick to my guns and hope they grow up with lovely memories of pretty calendars rather than vowing their own children will get the chocolate calendar cos their mum was mean and never bought it...!!

Dh has bought me the boots beauty one.

www.traidcraftshop.co.uk/p-12429-buy-divine-milk-chocolate-advent-calendar-85g-single-traidcraft-online-shop.aspx

Chocolate and religion!

I had picture ones until chocolate ones became a "thing" in the late 80s and my younger siblings demanded them, but I always preferred the picture ones because advent calendar chocolate, like Easter egg chocolate, is the cheap and nasty kind! I didn't really have a sweet tooth even as a child and I wasn't that keen on chocolate anyway.

peggyundercrackers I remember my picture advent calendars, even to particular ones! I have particular fond memories of a brown 1970s stable scene with glitter on it from my very young days :p

Long before we discovered that chocolate was a migraine trigger for DS1, he simply had his chocolate with his breakfast! It's a tiny piece!

Feel free to not buy them for your kids, but expect to take responsibility for explaining why to them.

We started them when DD asked very politely for one at 8.

We have a reusable felt one which they love, filled with felt pictures that gradually populate a christmas tree. But life is too short to deny them a choc one when they are old enough to ask nicely for it.

If funds allow you could get a reusable nativity scene one where there are boxes with little figurines and they gradually populate the nativity scene. And maybe do choc ones too.