The History of The Advent Calendar

My huband (Joe) really enjoys reading his Wall Street Journal every day, especially on the weekends.  He often clips and sends articles to various family members, and friends when he spies an interesting article pertaining to a specific person.  When one of his clippings arrive in one of our mail boxes or email in-box, we are all delighted to be the recipient of one of his clippings, and eagerly begin reading the article.  Well today was my day!  I received the following article, clipped from the Wall Street Journal... his timing on sending me this particular article is absolutely perfect!!!  So.... now I am sharing the same article on my blog... this blog ties into my other blog "Christmas Countdown Advent Calendars" in which I spoke about these calendars being a tradition in my family and how much I personally enjoy them each year.  This is a very interesting article... I hope you enjoy how these precious calendars began.

Americans can thank Germans for a holiday tradition besides the modern Christmas tree: the Advent calendar, a card counting down to Christmas in which children open one "window" a day, finding a picture, a poem or story, a sweet or a small gift.

Photos: The Advent of the Advent Calendar

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State Museums of Berlin

An Advent calendar from 1947

As a new exhibition in Germany shows, the old calendars also mirror the nation's past. "It's amazing how the twists of Germany's history—the charming, the good, the bad" are shown in the calendars, says Tina Peschel, an ethnographer at the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin. She curated the exhibit of around 200 of them.

The father of the Advent calendar, Gerhard Lang, drew his inspiration from his late 19th-century childhood, when his mother baked 24 meringue pastries and affixed them to a carton, indulging her son in one each day through Christmas Eve. (Advent begins around the end of November or the beginning of December.)

Mr. Lang published his first Advent calendar in 1903, a cheerful jumble of illustrated children's toys surrounding Christmas-themed poems. Youngsters could paste illustrations of dancing pretzel makers and angels working for the German post office over the verses. In 1920, Mr. Lang's publishing house invented the perforated doors used on modern Advent calendars—but failed to get a patent. Copycats profited.

After the First World War, Advent calendars were "demilitarized," and docile animals replaced drawings of cannons and toy solders. But "Hitler quickly co-opted the calendars," says Ms. Peschel. Nazi symbols were substituted for Christian ones: swastika-clad children building snowmen and Nazi soldiers enshrined within Advent wreaths.

After World War II and Germany's division, brightly colored Christian Advent calendars returned in West Germany, garnering G.I. fans who sent them home to their families with pamphlets in English. The calendars took off in America when Newsweek published a photo in 1953 of President Eisenhower's grandchildren grasping for an Advent calendar. Demand and production jumped.

State Museums of Berlin

A 1951 East German calendar with rare Christian symbols

Meanwhile, East Germany launched a successful campaign to abandon Advent, advertising Christmas as an atheist holiday and marginalizing publishing houses that added Christian symbols to what they dubbed "pre-Christmas calendars." Instead, state-approved calendars featured Young Pioneers frolicking in the snow—though parents resisted buying galactic-themed calendars with rocket sleighs promoting the Soviet space race. "Even communist parents still wanted winter scenes," says Ms. Peschel.

And what became of edible calendars like those of Mr. Lang's childhood? They thrived in the 1930s, were cut short by war rations, but picked up speed again with the postwar proliferation of preservatives in candy.

Despite all the marketing to children, Christmas can be fun for German parents, too: Some modern breweries offer relief to parents weary from buying presents via "calendars" providing a can of beer each day of Advent.