VIRTUAL ADVENT TOUR: Advent Calendars

I'm back for another edition of the Virtual Advent Tour hosted by the wonderful sprite writes. It's getting very close to Christmas - one week til Christmas Eve!

Growing up in the 1970s,  I have a few distinct memories. One memory from Christmas time was that we always got Mandarin oranges. Not the Clementines that are everywhere now. My mother would always splurge and get a box of Mandarin oranges. They were wrapped in the green paper, and my sister and I could easily peel them on our own. We certainly got our vitamin C in those days before Christmas. 

The other expensive treat was an Advent Calendar every year. We always had one, and it always was the chocolate one. My sister and I would alternate days to open as we waited for Christmas. Now, advent calendars are everywhere, and can be found quite cheaply so that my kids each had their own chocolate advent calendar when they were young. But my sister and I had to wait every other day to open a door. As the elder by three years, I had the foresight to count ahead and see the largest box was on the 24th, so could oh, so generously offer my younger sister the opportunity to go first. I was being so nice! I'm pretty sure that some years the chocolate advents were too hard to find in Nova Scotia in the 70s, and we would get an advent calendar with just doors and a picture behind them. Could we really have been so deprived?

So Advent Calendars have always been a part of my Christmas traditions. That could explain why I've loved the Virtual Advent Calendar every year and am so glad that sprite  has continued to host this wonderful sharing event.

Now there are so many possible advent calendars to try: Davids Tea has a tea countdown, I've seen Craft Beer Advent Calendars, Star Wars Playmobile Calendars - the list is really endless with food and with toys and anything you can imagine. Here's a few examples I found:

One year when my daughter was probably 6 or 7, I was out shopping Boxing Day sales and came across a Polly Pocket Winter Advent Calendar. It wasn't actually Christmas, just a nice secular winter countdown, filled with winter clothes and accessories for a Polly Pocket doll. And it was half-price, an extra bonus. But the reason this was so perfect was that my daughter's birthday was January 23rd, so we used the calendar to countdown to her birthday party. It was really the most perfect thing I could find. And I never found another one like that to count down to her birthday again. I did however, find Polly Pocket paraphernalia around the house for many years.

Everyone loves an Advent Calendar. I even bought my parents a Starbucks Advent Calendar a few years ago. It was originally filled with caramels but now I refill it every year after a trip to Bulk Barn.

Enjoy as we continue to count down on the Virtual Advent Tour.