ADVENT BEGINS -November 2022 - National Today

History of Advent Begins

The Advent calendar is a key part of the Advent customs, helping Christians count the day until Christmas Eve. Over the years, it has become a part of the Christmas celebrations, widely used worldwide. The traditional Advent four-week season begins four weeks and Sundays before Christmas. It is termed to be the beginning of the liturgical year.

Since its introduction in the fifth century, the 19th century saw the Advent calendar evolve from a simple calendar with doors concealing a picture or a Bible verse to including chocolates, cheese, alcohol, or make-up.

The tradition of counting the days until Christmas began in the mid-19th century when German Lutheran families marked each day until Christmas Eve with a chalk line. In the early 1900s, German printer Gerhard Lang began designing Advent calendars using cardboards. By the 1920s, these cardboard Advent calendars started having little cut-out doors with a devotional picture or Bible verse hidden behind them. During World War II, the production of the calendars dwindled as Germany began rationing cardboards and in the 1930s, Lang completely stopped his production of Advent calendars. Looking to enforce the state’s ideology on the younger generations, Nazi Germany employed the Advent calendar to inculcate loyalty into children. In 1943, the Third Reich produced its version of the Advent calendar, which included images of swastikas, Nazi symbols, and tanks.

When the war ended, a few resumed the production of Advent calendars as cardboard became a surplus. One of the popular manufacturers was Richard Sellmer of Stuttgart, whose company still exists today. In the 1950s, his calendars were exported to the United States, and they became a part of the American Christmas tradition.

Moving on to 1953, “Newsweek” published a photograph of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s grandchildren with an Advent calendar. That photograph is what many consider to have boosted the calendar’s popularity in the United States. The first chocolate Advent calendar was produced in 1958 and Cadbury joined the race for this special type of Advent calendar in 1971. Since then, different companies have been marketing Advent calendars with different products, expanding the target audience from children to include the adult population.