I feel like maybe they used to be a German thing? At least, friends with German ancestors seemed to be more into them than the general public.
I’d never heard of an Advent calendar until I saw one mentioned in a 2000 Onion piece, which made them out as some kind of arcane Fundamentalist tradition:
“The first thing she did when she got here was explain that our Christmas tree was a pagan tradition Jesus never would have approved of,” said mother Janet Langan, 49. “Not long after, she nearly fainted when she discovered we didn’t have an Advent calendar in the house, so Marv had to run out and buy one.”
Note that Christian Advent isn’t just “December 1-24”. It always starts four Sundays before Christmas, and so varies from 22 days (if Christmas Eve is a Sunday) to 28 days (if Christmas is a Sunday). Usually (5/7th of the time) the Sunday after Thanksgiving is the First Sunday of Advent (the other 2/7 of the time, there’s a week delay).
Indeed, a disturbingly large number of Americans think that the “12 Days of Christmas” start on December 14 (and even more disturbingly, many think they start on the 13th).
They were mainstream in Denmark from at least the 70s. Some of them were elaborate bridges or castles, that were assembled from cardboard cutouts.
My family lived in Germany for a year and that Christmas my parents bought Der Klingende Adventskalender, that had both an LP and a christmas themed cover (santa on a train) with small doors with pictures behind. The LP had 24 tracks for each day, either a song (yeah!) or a small story (meh, though some of the narrators were good).
IMO / IME Advent calendars are a Catholic thing. Or a German thing. Or both. Definitely an Olde Tyme Religious thing.
When we were kids in the early 1960s our ancient (born 188x) Catholic German grandmother sent us one every year until she died.
OTOH in modern secular 1960s SoCal you couldn’t find one to buy. Mom tried.
My family lived in Germany in the ‘70s and the cardboard Advent calendars with little doors with pictures behind them were very common. As a 7- and 8-year old, I loved them. They also taught me the benefits of delayed gratification.
This is the kind I grew up with. Not German, not Catholic, they were just a Christmas thing.
However we had a different one as well.
My aunt, who was stationed in Germany, sent us a German one: a long hanging cloth, with a Christmas tree as the main decoration. Copper rings on each of the tree branches, numbered 24 from the bottom, to 1 on the top. And a little plastic woodcutter, in medieval hose, jerkin and liberty cap, carrying an axe and a log, hanging from a little dowel that fit in the rings. He started on 24 and every day we moved him up a branch. Christmas Day, he was on the star at the top of the tree.
Your time frame reminded me of the bit in Bad Santa (2003):
“Well they can’t all be winners, can they?”
Lego advent calendars are the bomb - I get the Star Wars one, one kid gets City, the other, Friends (used to be Harry Potter but she’s over that). My wife gets some non-Lego variant instead.
We also have a family heirloom wooden train one (with little doors in the carriages to pop chocolate Lindt balls into), which is from at least the 80s, I believe.
Not really a “new thing”, even in popular culture. In National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), they used an Advent Calendar to show the passage of time (when they get the tree; when guests arrive; etc.). So, it had to be “known” by a reasonable percentage of the population for the reference to work.
Eh, I’m not too disturbed by that.
I don’t find it terribly important that people are knowledgeable about old religious arcana.
And I still really don’t get it, other than having an infinite number of pieces would quickly crash any computer.
That explanation seems to miss the point, whatever it is.
I interpreted it as a comparison to old-school arcade games where there is an infinite armada of enemies attacking you. You never kill them all, you just keep playing until you lose all your ships or you get bored.
Ah, that’s it. Specifically there’s a video game named “Infinite Armada” by Roblox.
In this case, only pieces next to an open space or will be next to an open space in search-depth number of moves need be considered. The real problem is that the number of possible moves in this game increases faster with search depth than compared to standard chess.
From the beginning of the explanation on the page cited:
This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by an infinite armada of stockfish BOTS -
I’m not surprised it missed the point.
People who don’t care about old religious arcana, sure, no problem.
People who do care but don’t care to get it right, that’s what bugs me.
On Infinite Armada Chess, the king is still near the front. I suspect that whichever side manages to open up a hole to their ocean of queens first (presumably white) would quickly reach victory after that. And with only need for a small number of pieces to be considered, well within the capability of modern computers.
Unless your strategy is for your king to keep retreating as you can move queens out from in back of him. Then it becomes a contest of who can maximize their movement efficiency.
I thought I’d give it a shot since I have a Roblox account, but it gave me this amusing message (see the second-to-last line):
