When I was in junior high, we took a field trip to an international holiday festival. I bought a cool advent calendar with random little toys (think Cracker Jack toys, when Cracker Jack toys were still decent) and I really liked it. Seems like most of the advent calendars these days just have cheap, waxy fake chocolate behind the doors which really isn’t much to look forward to!
We had one that my grandmother made. It was made of embroidered red felt with 25 pockets. Every day, we placed a different winter-themed wooden ornament (also handmade) into a pocket. I didn’t know about the cardboard/candy type Advent calendars until I was a teenager and saw one at a friend’s house.
That’s right, yous made me remember something long forgotten, that my mom’s Advent calendar had been printed in Germany, sometime in the 1950s, I think. It came with a pamphlet with the description of each day’s scene translated into English. Even though my most recent mostly-German ancestor in Pennsylvania was born about 200 years ago, after which our remote Pennsylvania German heritage became genetically swamped by the Irish sides of my mom’s ancestry, somehow in my mother’s mother’s line a few German heritage things were kept up until my lifetime, including Anisplätzschen and Pfeffernüsse.
Catholic here.We had one that was a felt Christmas tree with 24 numbered hooks. You placed a small glass ornament each day until Christmas Eve, when you put the star up.
My sister has recently gotten into collecting German hand-carved wooden Nativity pieces.
StG
It seems possible that my mom and your godmother saw the same pattern or magazine article. Ours was on a felt background but in all other ways sounds very similar. Mom still has the original and has made a few others through the years.
That sounds like the one we had, that we used every year. Only we weren’t Catholic, just sort of non-denominational, generic Christian.
I actually had a commercial one with no gifts/candy. It was a big felt wall hanging with plastic symbols (candy cane, sled, presents, teddy bear, etc) that you stuck on to the numbered days with Velcro.
ETA: We also had an Advent wreath. We were Lutheran but my mom was raised Catholic so it’s hard to know which side of the fence our traditions came from.
The reason I asked about this, by the way, is because of some articles that have been appearing in our local newspaper lately about Advent calendars with gifts - basically the usual aren’t-kids-today-spoiled stuff that turns up now and then, but I was startled to see a claim that the average amount spent on a calendar was NOK 540. They did mention that this is average is pulled upwards by a small number of quite well-off parents spending several thousand kroner for each child’s calendar.
I bought myself a Lindt chocolate calendar this year, because part of being a grown-up means you can buy yourself a chocolate Advent calendar if you want to, and that felt like a big deal to me at NOK 300. Younger son, at age 12, has a cloth calendar with pockets that we bought a few years back; I’ve put a little bit of chocolate in each pocket (wrapped in a piece of paper towel to keep the calendar clean!). And older son, who is 18, requested and got 24 glass bottles of Coke.
Advent calendars do seem to be a bigger deal in Norway than in some other countries, probably because the idea came here from Germany fairly early on. When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, my aunt would buy the calendar for me each year, and most of my friends didn’t have them. So even though it “just” had the pictures, it was a big deal.
I love the idea of the tree with ornaments calendars, but my guys are too old to be impressed by that now I’m afraid… maybe some day when the kids start having kid of their own?
I’ve gotten the Lego town advent calendar every year on Dec 9th for the last 10 years or so, from my husband. It’s my birthday present.
I recently discovered there are castle Lego advent calendars, and Star Wars Lego ones, too. Only ever saw the town ones in stores until recently.
My great-grandmother made one for me in the early 70s. It’s a big, burlap wall hanging with 12 pockets across the top and 12 across the bottom. In the middle is a felt Christmas tree with big brass buttons. There is a little, felt bag with a loop for a handle inside each pocket. Each day, I’d pull out a little felt bag, get a little gift (piece of candy, some barrettes, cracker jack type toy, etc.), and hang the little bag on the tree.
My kids have wooden ones with little doors. I am still in the process of buy tiny things to go in each little nook. (Guess I should go to the store.) So far, some of the things I’ve bought include: uninflated Christmas balloons, a candy bracelet, some gold foil covered chocolate Hanukkah coins, little wooden puzzles, a Chinese jump rope, some chocolate snowmen, little tiny LED flashlights, and some little bouncy balls. It is really hard to find things that will fit!
I was raised mainstream Protestant in the Midwest.
We spent my first 5 years living in Germany, and had one of the family servants as our governess [she had been brought over for my dad and his brothers before from Germany WW2 and got passed around to all us grandchildren, and acted as my Grandmothers maid of all work in between kids] so we grew up with Advent wreaths, calendars and we actually had klompen [wooden shoes but German style, not Dutch - they are felt uppers on a wooden sole] as well as American style stockings. I still have several of the German style glass christmas tree ornaments, a peacock, a pickle and about 20 small clips that hold candles about the size of the ones you put on a birthday cake. Not that I would attach lit candles to a tree however =) I know the peacock has been in the family since about 1830.
Being Jewish, I never had one or heard of one until I got married, but we now give Lego Advent calendars to our grown kid and her husband. (One each!) I don’t think they had Star Wars calendars until last year - we used to get them at a Lego store, and they sure would have had them on display.
I think the star wars and castle ones have tended to sell out instantly, and to only be carried by some stores. I get my Town one at the Lego store at the local mall, and the guy there told me the Star Wars one had sold out the day it came in.
I’d thought it was just a Catholic thing. I didn’t know Prods had them too, until now. 
Well, le-chayim!
The Lego store in San Jose had them the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I didn’t see the castle one in the current Lego catalog.
I would have got them for my kids when they were little, but I have three kids, and whenever I saw them, there were only ever two styles.
Yeah. My grandma on my mom’s side used to get the cardboard ones for all the grandkids each year. Now that we’re grown, my mom still does it for my sister, one of my cousins, me, and anyone any of use happen to be dating and bringing to Thanksgiving. So I have one in my desk drawer right now.
I don’t know what the actual name for it is, but every December as a kid we’d make this chain of red and green construction paper. Every day you’d tear one off until you got to Christmas itself. Never even saw the candy types until adulthood.
Me too. We get candy tomorrow 
I buy them for my brother and myself every year now that we’re grown - our parents bought them for us when we were small some years.
That’s when you buy three of one style, and none of the other. To kids that’s “fair” in a way that someone getting a different one isn’t.
If it’s a Catholic thing, that would explain why we never saw them in West Texas. There were Catholics there, but they were a distinct minority. I remember going to eat lunch at a friend’s house when I was 10, and his family was Catholic (as I was about to learn). I don’t think I’d ever even heard the word Catholic, and I about fell out of my chair when his family crossed themselves before the meal. I had no idea what that was all about and even thought my parents had maybe failed to teach me adequately about social graces.