How an Advent Calendar Works

An advent calendar counts down to Christmas, one door a day. That much everyone knows. What surprises people is that the calendar in the shops and the church season it takes its name from do not run over the same dates, and only one of them starts on December 1.

The Season Moves; The Boxes Do Not

Liturgical Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, so it starts somewhere between November 27 and December 3 and runs between 22 and 28 days depending on the year. A chocolate advent calendar has 24 identical doors printed in a factory months in advance, which means it has to start on a fixed date. December 1 is the compromise, and it is why the shop-bought calendar and the church one usually disagree about which day is the first. If you want the actual season for a given year, our liturgical calendar generator works out the Advent Sunday date along with the rest of the church year.

Twenty-Four Doors, Not Twenty-Five

Most calendars stop on Christmas Eve. The 24 doors count down to the day rather than including it, on the reasonable grounds that Christmas Day supplies its own occasion. Calendars with 25 doors exist and are not wrong, merely a different convention.

Making Your Own for Any Countdown

The mechanism -- a fixed end date, one marked square per day, something small behind each one -- is not specific to December. Our countdown calendar generator takes any target date and prints the days remaining as a grid you can cross off, which works as well for a holiday, a birthday or a move as it does for Christmas. Our guide to making a countdown calendar covers the practicalities.

For a homemade version with something behind each door, a blank calendar grid for December gives you 24 squares to number, decorate and attach envelopes to. Children who help build one tend to be considerably more invested in it than in anything bought ready-made.

What Goes Behind the Doors

Chocolate is the default and by no means the only option. A line of a story, a small task, a photograph, a plan for the evening: the calendar is a structure for daily anticipation, and the contents are entirely yours to choose.