Advent Calendar Ideas for Every Age

The advent calendar has undergone a transformation. What used to be a piece of card with twenty-four bad chocolates behind it is now a category that runs from three dollars to three hundred, covering beauty, whisky, hot sauce, LEGO, socks and, inevitably, cheese.

Which means it is worth thinking about properly, because an advent calendar is a curious kind of gift. It is given in advance of the season rather than during it, it is opened in twenty-four instalments, and if you get it right it produces a small good moment every morning for most of a month.

Buy It in November

Start here, because this is the mistake. Advent calendars go on sale in September and the good ones sell out in November, weeks before anybody is thinking about December. The popular beauty and spirits calendars are gone by the middle of the month and reappear only at absurd resale prices.

If you know you want a specific one, buy it now. It is the one Christmas purchase where waiting for a Black Friday discount reliably means not getting it at all.

The reverse is also true. Any calendar still on the shelf on the first of December will be half price on the twenty-seventh, which is worth knowing if you buy for next year.

Young Children

For small children the ritual matters more than the contents. They are not evaluating the chocolate; they are enjoying the fact that something happens every single morning and that they are allowed to do it.

A refillable wooden calendar is the best purchase in this whole category. It is bought once, it lasts twenty years, it becomes part of how the family does December, and you control what goes in. Fill it with a mix of small toys, a sweet, and — this is the part people underuse — folded notes with an activity on them. Bake something today. Wear pyjamas to dinner. We are watching a film tonight.

The activity days cost nothing and are consistently the ones children remember, which is a useful thing to know about the whole enterprise.

Older Children and Tweens

Somewhere around eight the chocolate stops being sufficient and the interest shifts to whatever the child is currently obsessed with. This is the age of the themed build calendar — a construction set that assembles over twenty-four days, a mini figure a day, a science kit that produces a result at the end.

These work well because they have an arc. Day fourteen means something, which a chocolate calendar cannot manage. They are also considerably more expensive, in the forty to sixty dollar range, which is worth budgeting for as part of the gift rather than in addition to it.

If you have several children, matched calendars avoid a great deal of December arguing.

Teenagers

Teenagers are frequently written off as too old for this, which is wrong — they like it and they will not say so. What changes is that the contents need to be things they would actually use.

Beauty and skincare calendars are the obvious commercial answer and they are genuinely popular. A build-your-own is often better: socks, snacks they like, lip balm, hair ties, gift cards in small denominations, a couple of larger items on the numbered days that matter. Twelve days is a perfectly respectable length and costs half as much.

Cash in small amounts spread across the days is unfashionable advice and extremely well received.

Adults

The adult advent calendar is the fastest-growing part of this market and the one where the price range is widest.

The spirits, wine and beer calendars are the flagship version — twenty-four samples, usually two hundred dollars or more, and genuinely fun if the recipient is into it. Tea and coffee calendars do the same thing at a quarter of the price. Beauty calendars remain the biggest sellers by volume. Hot sauce, cheese, socks and candles all exist and all have an audience.

The rule is the same as any other gift: it has to match a thing they actually like. A whisky calendar for someone who drinks whisky twice a year is twenty-two small bottles gathering dust.

Build Your Own for Less

A homemade calendar beats most bought ones and costs whatever you decide it costs. Twenty-four small paper bags, a length of string, a marker, and an afternoon.

The principle that makes it work is variation. If every day is the same kind of thing, it becomes routine by day eight. Mix small objects, sweets, notes, activities, and two or three larger items placed on days that need a lift — the first, the twelfth, the twenty-fourth, and whichever day of December is worst in your household.

Budget roughly two to three dollars a day and put most of it into three or four items rather than spreading it evenly. Twenty small disappointments cost the same as four good days and are worth much less.

The Couples Version

A homemade calendar between partners is one of the better December ideas and requires almost no money. Half the days are notes — a specific memory, a thing you are grateful for, a plan. The rest are small: a coffee, a bar of chocolate, a film chosen for them.

Done well it is twenty-four days of small attention in the busiest month of the year, which is not a bad description of what people actually want from December.

Do Not Buy Two of the Same One

The advent calendar is unusually prone to duplication because it is the one gift people buy early and rarely mention. Two grandparents, one aunt and a godparent independently deciding on the same LEGO calendar in early November is an extremely common outcome, and it is discovered on the first of December when it is too late.

If your family buys these, put them on the shared list like anything else. It takes thirty seconds and it is the difference between four children opening four calendars and one child opening the same calendar twice.

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