German Christmas Tradition – Advent Calendar

Advents Calendar

I grew up with an “Advents” Calendar and what it does is a count down from December 1^st through December 24^th to get you through the Holiday season and to Christmas Eve a little quicker. In Germany we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. In the US it is kind of hard to find the traditional “Advents” Calendar besides the chocolate filled ones, so every year I make each of my little ones their own “Advents” Calendar. You can pretty much use anything you like.

One year I used 24 cigarette packs ( I’m a none smoker but lots of family and friends smoke so that was easy) and cleaned the inside out, added a little gift like candy, sticker, note pads, whatever fits inside and wrapped each box with a nice wrapping paper and added it under a small decorated tree in the kitchen, each day the kids were allowed to pick one and the last one had a bigger gift like a CD or DVD ( of course that wasn’t fitting in the box, I always left a note in the last box to look for it in the house…).

Last year I did something similar here is a pic of what one of the Calendars looked like

It was so simple, a bit time consuming but worth in the end. I went to a local scrapbook store and asked to use their cutter and template for a box ( they usually won’t charge you for that), I had 24  8 ½ x 11 size papers and cut each into a box shape with the cutter, then once I had them all cut I just had to assemble them all and fill them each with goodies ( My Tip, save some Halloween candy and fill the calendar.. I do that almost every year, the kids will never miss it and why let them have a bucket full of candy and it will be gone in a week).

Decorate each box with stickers or ribbon anything you like for Christmas, add ribbon to each box to hang it up.  I have a rod in my kitchen for a picture, I removed the picture and added all the little packages to the road, as you can see above, wrapped one string of battery  operated lights around the road ( wrapped the battery pack with wrapping  paper to make it look like a present..lol)… and voila your “Advents” calendar is done.

Now every morning after the kids are dressed and ready to start their day they can go and cut off one package .. they get so excited to see what’s inside and count down the day till the Christmas Angel ( yet another tradition.) will arrive….

You can also use little Goodie bags and fill them( make sure these are not the see through kind),  attach the string ribbon and hang up in your home… soo many possibilities and the kids really love the countdown to Christmas…

Frohe Weihnachten ( Merry Christmas)