chocolate advent calendars epitomize everything that is wrong with the world today

[emkana]

bit OTT non?

I just hate the idea that you need chocolate to look forward to something. That anticipation on its own is not enough.

But I also hate playgrounds in historical homes/ castles/ national trust houses. FGS. Why the fark is a castle not enough? Why do you also need a purpose built playground? So am probably a curmudgeon.

Hmm maybe we could design a smugmummy advent calender with various educational activities behind every window. What fun!

'If all ours can do about Advent is to rip open chocolates, they're a lost generation'

maybe she had pmt when she wrote it

What's a CDM?

Stick to your guns, jingle

Anyway my chn have a lego advent calender. Libby can pat me on the head.

Cadbury's dairy milk

My DS is only 21 months old so he really doesn't get Christmas (although it is celebrated in this house "properly" as a religious festival). What he does get is the Iggle Piggle advent calendar sitting on top of the microwave. Three days it has been in his life and he knows perfectly well that it has got chocolate in it and he gets one each day.

Before breakfast.

Flame away....

I worked it out, sloo-oo-oowly Bellas - cadbury's dairy milk! Makes it sound like something that people go to A&E with. CDM coming through!

We have three advent calendars in this house and not a shred of chocolate.

IF huge IF I was to ever entertain chocolate in an advent calendar.

Can someone, please oh please....tell me what Arsenal, Girls aloud, Lego, Bart Simpson....FFS have to do with the Christmas message ??

They get a small piece of fair traded chocolate in the evening. And there is a particular joy in the fact it's not a square off a big block; it's a small heart shaped piece of their very own.

I feel rather strongly about plasticised consumer culture, the tat-fest of Christmas, and about non fair traded chocolate. But frankly, in a world of capitalism eating its own entrails, with Dubya signing away environmental responsibilities to big business, of Mumbai being gunned down, of the fact there won't be another series of Dr Who till god knows when...sometimes one needs to open a window and push out a bit of choc.

advent is about looking forward to the birth of christ, not about eating chocolate

The Divine one tells you the Christmas story in instalments, actually, Bree. It's rather thrilling.

"maybe we could design a smugmummy advent calender with various educational activities behind every window. What fun!"

think I've got one of those

The kids are absolutely loving it

And they are also loving the chocolate in the other one, that Grandma gave them. And they would be loving the pictures in the conventional one that Granny gave them, if I didn't keep forgetting to give it to them

Not sure where we now stand on the Libby stakes.

Ah so fair trade consumers are the wannabe saviours of the world, rather than the real Saviour of the World!

duckyfuzz - in our house, we are managing to do both.

But where do you stand on playgrounds?

thanks I will

"But we short-change our children in Britain anyway, when it comes to tradition"

Who the hell said that tradition has to be wrapped up with religon?

I am unreasonably annoyed at this ridiculous and, frankly, insulting article.

If having a tiny piece of chocolate each day for 24 days is considered enough to make us emotionally retarded adults then we are really fu*ked aren't we? Do you think some-one should tell the chocolate companies that their food has the ability to stunt the growth of our emotions....I wonder if there is any scientific backing to this or is it a connection to the human spirit (akin to the connection to the seasons she is so keen on) that makes her so all knowing.

LOLOLOL at mumsnet

"It's fair trade so it's all right"

My kids would probably prefer CDM.

Mi

If I ever capitulate, it will be for your type of choccy advent fest.

I am not a Christian. I do like having a winter festival - and to some extent a festival of excess - probably because I do in fact have vague dippyhippy ideas about the cycle of the seasons. The Nativity story is, to my athiest mind, rather moving in depicting the whole frailty of the end of one year and the start of the new; it does, after all, amalgamate numerous religious traditions and does so very effectively.

And in that sense, a bit of chocolate rolls you up, nicely, to that midwinter feast. So actually I am acting entirely consistently with my own beliefs and values.