by Neil Rees, Christian Today
1 December is when many people open the first door on their Advent calendar. These are so common that few people realise it is a relatively modern tradition. This is the story …
Origins
The precursor to the Advent calendar originated in 19th-century German Lutheran homes as a method of counting down the days up to Christmas. It gradually developed into the printed, windowed calendars of today.
In the 1800s, German Lutherans often marked the approach of Christmas with small daily rituals such as drawing chalk lines on doors. By the late 19th century there are reports of handmade Advent calendars, which were boards or sheets with devotional images hung upon them. One of the earliest known examples of a wooden Advent calendar dates from about 1851.
Printed calendars
The first modern commercially printed Advent calendar is credited to Gerhard Lang (1881-1974), a German publisher based in Munich in Bavaria. His father had been a Swabian Lutheran priest, and he was inspired by his mother’s childhood practice of attaching treats or pictures to a piece of card in the run up to Christmas.
In 1903 he printed a “Weihnachts- Kalendar” (Christmas calendar) called “Im Lande des Christkinds” (in the land of the Christ-child) with 24 images which you could put a sticker on. Different variants came out each year.
Some of these started on December 6, which is Sankt Nikolaus Tag (St Nicholas’s Day) and was considered the start of Christmas in the German tradition, and they had biblical and religious imagery. In 1920, he added little doors or windows for each day, which when opened revealed an image and sometimes a Bible text. Other publishers soon imitated and expanded this format.