Some may remember that last year my friend Andrea and I traded challenges, each of us writing on themes we alternated choosing. We’re going to try it again this year, and for our first theme, Andrea chose Advent Calendar
I’ve written several times about Advent calendars, and to some extent this whole exercise is a type of Advent calendar for me and for anyone who reads. I’ve talked about traditions and customs and the wide variety of calendars …take it from me, do not Google “Adult Advent calendar”! But today I’d like to think a bit of the underpinning philosophy that guides calendar design and the fundamental flaw in Advent calendar logic.
The first Advent calendar we had as kids only revealed pictures for each day, and it is a sad comment on my childhood that we anxiously gathered and fought for the opportunity to reveal the tiny picture behind the door. However, even with this sad calendar, there was a clear progression of doors and pictures, as the doors got bigger and the pictures became more ornate as each day passed, until in the week before Christmas we had left behind sleds and footballs and were blessed to reveal full-fledged angels, kings, and camels. The twenty-fourth was of course a picture of the manger scene, as if anyone couldn’t see that coming!
Gift Advent calendars employ the same logic, beginning with tiny treats and eventually growing to a cavalcade of fabulous prizes. Anyone looking to find the best thing on an AC simply skips over all the prosaic starters and jumps to the big reveal at the end. The message is clear, the month of December is intended to follow a progression of growing joy and excitement, climaxing on Christmas Day.
But is this reality? Do our journeys toward Christmas (or to any anticipated event) truly follow a geometric progression of growing joy? I know that the season of Advent is intended to represent, the generations of waiting for the first Christmas, but a quick look through the history books of the Old Testament show this line to be anything but straight. I think our journeys through the season are far less orderly than what is reflected in the traditional Advent calendar.
So a better calendar might be interspersed with great things and painful things and mundane things. Some doors should be full to the brim with every ounce of the Christmas spirit, egg nog should flow from the door when opened. Other doors should reveal nothing, because that’s exactly what one is feeling at the moment. Better still, we should retroactively design our own Advent calendars with content to meet our true experiences.
Hey, I think that is what this is!
So here is my proposal for a few of the dates in my Anarchic Calendar