The Unbearable Anticipation

Remember when you were a child and the thought of Christmas was just so exciting you could barely contain yourself? Back in this writer's day, it usually started around Thanksgiving. The November holiday was fun. You got to see family you probably hadn't seen since a summer get together and there was great food to be had. The thoughts of the upcoming Christmas holiday were just starting to brew in your head. Neighbor Evelyn always put up her Christmas tree the very next day after the turkey and trimmings but that wasn't our family's tradition. The old saying about Christmas being for children is true in such a pure and innocent sense. Though a deeply Christian holiday for much of the world, the wonderment and joys of Christmas is so very apparent in the faces of children throughout so many cultures. As adults, that anticipation we witness of children experiencing Christmas is so much a part of the sparkle of what makes the season magical. The joy and magic is only rivaled by the almost unbearable sense of the agonizing wait children endure as Christmas approaches. The unfiltered exhilaration and anxiety can be tempered, though, with various activities to keep young minds engaged throughout the season and one age-old activity is to introduce an Advent calendar to your holiday traditions. Advent is the Christian season of preparation over a period of four Sundays leading up to Christmas day. According to Wiki, "Advent" comes from the Latin word ad-venire which means "to come to." In the same vein, according to "A Short History of the Advent Calendar" at www.parenta.com, Advent was originally the four-week period for recent Christian converts to prepare for baptism. Now, it is more commonly associated with the lead-up to the celebration of Christ's birth. The first printed calendar of the Advent calendar is attributed to German-born Gerhard Lang in the early 1900s but with the rationing of so many things during WWII, even cardboard was considered a luxury and Lang's company shut down. After the war, Richard Sellmer of Stuttgart, Germany, picked up where Lang left off in producing Advent calendars that helped spread the anticipation of the Christmas season with traditional winter scenes. In 1958, the first chocolate Advent calendars were introduced which introduced a daily chocolate treat in the twenty-five days leading up to Christmas and by 1971, chocolate company, Cadbury, joined the profitable tradition which finally became cemented in modern life in 1993. Calendars, including 3-D formats were introduced with "doors" of perforated cardboard that could be opened to reveal a sweet surprise inside for each day leading up to Christmas. As a child, I can remember hearing about Advent calendars and the joy behind their doors but they weren't a part of my family's traditions. I think they were a bit too sophisticated and exotic for me and my siblings in the 1970s. At the time, we kids were pretty satisfied with that tree that looked like a colorful mountain of tinsel, Frank Sinatra and Brendalee singing Christmas tunes in the background and hoping there was enough snow on the neighborhood hill for our flying saucers.