At the table - The Advention of Christmas

Every year, I hear someone say "It just keeps getting earlier"... referencing the sudden appearance of Christmas in late September. Like it matters. For me, any season that is associated with joy, giving and connection to loved ones can start its shift as early as it damn well pleases. Many do not share my view here and I fully respect that. For some, the hoildays are strongly linked to sadness, stress, depression and anxiety, for which I am profoundly sorry. That must suck.

I do share some of those more cloudy thoughts around the holidays. We too, are pretty financially constrained and a fair way from loved ones, here in South West France. I get at least some of the associated pressures. Nowhere does my Christmas wish-list mention a yacht, or a safari in Botswana. For me, it is purely non-secular nostalgia. It represents the warmth, comfort and security of my childhood, the kindness of social interactions and the mental calm of ordered tradition. The start of the silly season is a countdown to continuity.

As kids, we did it with the anchor of an Advent Calendar. Back then, they were just colourful cardboards with numbered windows, conatining nothing but a seasonal image, but that was enough. "I got a star" or "Mine was an angel" - ample, simple reward. It helped put the brakes on Christmas. It gave our parents a degree of control and ordered our anticpation. It kept excitement in check because we knew exactly where we were, in the whole Santa Claus scheme of things.

It seems pretty certain to me, that there is way more pressure these days, around creating the "perfect" holiday experience, and you don't have to look much further than the advent calendar to see that slippery slope. The first chocolate-behind-the-window version, appeared as recently as 1958 and was quickly seized upon by the likes of Mssrs. Cadbury, Rowntree and Mackintosh. This was a massive upgrade for we Christmas urchins. A toothsome turbocharge to our morning rituals. Numbered advent windows, previously piously respected, now had their integrity ruined with chocolatey break-ins and the careful re-sealing of their crinkle cut frames. At least mine were...

Perhaps the first casualty of the conversion to an edible advent, was Christ the Saviour himself. Gone were the cherubims and seraphims, ass and archangel, the star and the stable. More was now mouthwateringly more-ish. As Christmas gradually got commercial, so did the cardboard cut-outs. Advent calendars became conduits for cash. Without needing planning permissions, the windows got bigger, the gifts more extravagant and not-that-slowly, they became masterpieces of marketing. Bundle 24 miniatures behind 24 doors, call it something festive and frivolous, use the term luxury or limited edition, and suddenly you have urgency, exclsuivity and hype, all tied up in a bow.

Perhaps the slickest of strategists of advent calendars 2.0, are the billionaire brains trusts of the beauty industry. For them, advent calendars function as both marketing and logistics tools, letting brands capitalise on the season’s excitement, while getting rid of excess inventory and boosting visibility in one foul swoop.

There is even a "launch culture" around beauty advent calendars, which has become its own woeful, winter sport. There are wait-list whisper networks, early-access codes - traded like secrets - and those with lightning-fast reflexes who somehow always check out first. Fans set alarms, swap intel in group chats and refresh pages like they’re buying tickets to Taylor Swift. Social media only fuels the frenzy, with unboxings, countdowns and first impressions taking over feeds long before the first of December.

One pioneer of this modish madness was possibly London's own Liberty store in the early Noughties, and the launch of a whopper €200 advent calendar, advertised heavily as having a value of twice that amount. It sold out completely in less than 2 hours. It is still the fastest selling product in London, and this year will be no different.

What Advent calendars truly offer - far beyond chocolate, beyond a mini-moisturiser, is a little rhythm and reason. A softer cadence in a month that has become the season of crashing cymbals and crushing cynicism. A return to something deliberate and human: the art of anticipation.

Perhaps that’s why advent calendars should ulitmately prevail. Not because we need more stuff, but because we need more moments. Invitations to pause at the tiny door. A ritual that keeps us present, not one that just keeps giving us presents. And maybe that is the real gift — not the treat, but the tenderness of taking life one small window at a time. Now then...where's the After Eights?...