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

[emkana]

bit OTT non?

Oh great pithy little article!I love this bit.

'Especially for small children, who are not yet corrupted into thinking that all wonder, all hope, all tradition and culture must be translated into cheap confectionery before it is worth having'

You lot don't get it.It's not really about the advent calendar, it is a wider issue of things replacing anticipation and imagination.

I'd sooner engage in light frottage and whipping sessions with Jim Davidson than allow my children anywhere near a 'chocolate' advent calendar.

Oh moondog did you have to! Boak.

Why seek out the stilton - just bogstandard Laughing Cow would do i think. (yum)

But it doesn't replace anticipation and immagination, only in this instance which on the grand scale of things is not that big a deal.

Moondog - You do realise the frottage and whipping sessions with JD would not be Fairtrade, don't you?

(WIll go back and read whole thread in a minute) But FFS Libby! There is actually more to the cycles of the year than CHristian mythology: in our house we keep St George's Day, Mayday, Midsummer, The Gathering (Ok this is not actually a significant date to many people, but an annual camping trip to a demented festival that we like), Halloween, Xmas and New Year.

Oh and while I wouldn;t have bothered buying DS any kind of advent calendar, my DB's girlfriend has bought him a THomas the Tank Engine chocolate one and I have no problem with that, I explain it's a countdown to Xmas and we have a morning game of Find the Right Number.

It does.
As do trips to bloody Lapland and countless visits to old duffers in polyester beards in overheated department stores and all the rest of it.

Don't get me wrong.I'mm all for nice things and a bit of luxury but this?????
Nah.

The thing is though, a chocolate advent calendar does not replace anticipation and imagination. It really really doesn't.

there's more to life than chocolate.

like what? booze.

weeeeeee

I don't have time to read this thread BUT advent calendar pictures were MUCH BETTER in the olden days (am 150 yrs old). Sparkly and beautifully painted. Now they are shit, so chocolate is better.

ooh sorry just realized I'm repeating what quadrophenia said. Well anyway, I know my children and I know it doesn't, not at all.

what is it supposed to be about then?

god?

Mind you, Libby Purvert is a classic Buckethead Christian anyway, in that everything that's Wrong with the WOrld boils down to other people not being Christians and not taking noisy self-rightous badge-waving christians seriously enough.

yeah yeah yeah . Moondog is right. And when moondog is right, she is really right.

when you're a kid and you wanna go weeeee . . .

when you're a kid and you wanna go weeeee . . .

you can still get pretty sparkly pretty ones, blackdog. You ain't looking hard nuff

Won't it be lovely for you all though to wake up on Christmas Day and to know that your children are having a really real Christmas whereas all the other poor corrupted children are having a really horrible fake one.

?

I'm not talking about the whole of Christmas. I'm talking bout advent calendars.

Jeeezuuz

no it is the bigger picture pointydog

Not a single person has said what an excellent parent I am with my pockets and paper which may or may not entitle the bearer to chocolate.

Anticipation and imagination: hmm. I partly agree. Though our star wars one has different shapes of choc in and the kids wonder what it will be each morning.

We have fun thinking up 'inappropriate' shapes. A poo. A rat. etc.

I think the anticipation issue is culture-wide, though. Don't like it being hooked to Christmas, specifically.

Actually, I loathe the hypocritical sentimentality of all the 'child-like wonder' guff that Christmas seems to bring out in conservatives.

But why do we have to analyse everything i just do not get it

We havea felt one that comes out every year and The Advent Calendar Fairy puts two chocolate coins in each pocket except when she forgets, or gets a rush of blood to the head and puts a couple of chocolate father Christmasses or something. We also have two picture ones as well - and my two love the chocolate and the pctures. Especially my nearly 13 year old!

When I was little, the pictures were printed on really thin paper so that if you hung them in a window the light shone through. I still remember how lovely they looked!

well, we don't have to, Quad. But it can be interesting. And by looking at how and why society is what it is, and the (sometimes) hidden meanings or implications of things, we can try and protect ourselves from Bad Things slipping past unnoticed and unchallenged.

we don't analyse everything, quad. Some of us analyse some things. Then those few come and spout forth on mn and make it seem as if everyone is over-analysing.