Where do Advent calendars come from?



While most people are very familiar with and practice the lighthearted tradition of Advent calendars, many might be surprised by its relatively recent development as a Christian tradition.

The Advent calendar is a Christian tradition dating back only to the 19th century, making it less than 200 years old. Advent, derived from the Latin word "adventus," means
coming” or “arrival.”

'Lacking windows at first, Lang’s design is essentially the same style we have today, though war and a few subsequent alterations would change it slightly.'

The calendar counts down the days until Christmas during the Advent season, which is also the very beginning of the liturgical calendar. The Advent calendar then, in its most basic form, is a method of counting down the days until the coming of Christ on Christmas day.

RELATED: More than a countdown: Do you know the full meaning of Advent?

Photo by AMAURY CORNU/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

Often, in more recent iterations, small treats, gifts, and pictures are placed in the doors of the calendar, the number of which usually range between 22 and 28 days depending on the day that Christmas Day falls on. Because of the possible range, most Advent calendars simply begin on December 1 and end on December 24, Christmas Eve.

Counting down

The Advent calendar has seen quite a few variations in its relatively short-lived existence, though the basic idea has always been the same.

A tradition originating among Lutheran Christians, Advent calendars first involved chalk marks that would be erased as the day approached. This practice helped believers anticipate the coming of Christ.

Originating in and around Munich, Germany, in the 19th century, Advent calendars were used to count down the days until Christmas Day.

Gerhard Lang is widely regarded as the creator of the modern Advent calendar. A partner at the lithographic institute Reichhold & Lang, Gerhard Lang is credited with printing the first Advent calendar in 1908, though some say it was some years later.

Lacking windows at first, Lang's design is essentially the same style we have today, though war and a few subsequent alterations would change it slightly.

Knock, knock

The small, numbered doors, a staple of contemporary calendars, were introduced in 1920. They sometimes had Bible verses or little pictures behind them.

Lang produced around 30 different calendar designs up until the end of the 1930s, when paper shortages and a national ban on paper calendars forced him to shutter the popular business.

However, Advent calendars made a post-war comeback. Richard Sellmer, the founder of the Sellmer Verlag publishing house, published the first Advent calendar after the Second World War, reviving the tradition.

Eighty years later, Sellmer Verlag still sells Advent calendars.

Coming to America

It is believed that American soldiers brought these calendars back after the war, and the tradition spread to the United States.

According to Britannica, the tradition of chocolate behind the doors was introduced in the 1950s, presumably to keep children engaged.

In America, the Advent calendar's popularity spread quickly in the post-war era. These days, children and adults alike can enjoy counting down the days until the Lord's Nativity with a vast array of different calendar designs.

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Santa Claus: Innocent Christmas fun or counterfeit Jesus?



Jesus is the reason for the season, but more often than not, it’s Santa who takes front and center stage. A 2,000-year-old baby offering an intangible gift just can’t compete with the big, red-suited, jolly man and his sleigh full of toys in the mind of a child.

That’s one of several reasons Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t do Santa with her three kids.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie presents a compelling case for ditching the man in the red hat and putting Jesus back on the throne of Christmas where He belongs.

Santa invites confusion

While Allie acknowledges that Santa is a “Christian liberty issue,” meaning “we have freedom as Christians to disagree,” she feels personally convicted to forgo the tradition to avoid confusing her children.

Santa “is a form of deceit,” she says.

“We want our kids to trust us ... and it can cause this kind of dissonance or confusion in a child when we tell them that someone is real, is giving them gifts, is watching them ... is taking a tally of the good deeds they do, the bad deeds they do ... and then allocating gifts in accordance to their behavior — and then to tell them one day that that system of morality around Christmastime doesn't exist,” she argues.

“I do believe that that causes, even if just for a moment, mistrust between the parent and child” and “confusion about what is actually true ... about the mysterious and supernatural realm.”

But “causing mistrust through deceit” isn’t even the biggest issue, she says. Santa can also cause “theological confusion” in developing children.

Santa and God have a lot in common, Allie explains. Both see us when we’re sleeping, know when we’re awake, and know if we’ve been bad or good, but the key difference is Santa takes his gifts away when we fail to be good, whereas God, infinite in grace and mercy, does not dangle salvation as a carrot in front of us to keep us behaving.

Santa “is a legalistic form of Christ” and a “counterfeit form of God,” says Allie.

And then there’s the flip side of this pitfall. Children might view God as a kind of Santa Claus, who gives them material gifts in exchange for obedience or good deeds, turning Him from the perfect and holy king of kings and the savior of humanity into a “feel-good” bringer of happiness.

In either case, the similarities between the two figures can deeply confuse malleable children who are still learning to distinguish between fact and fiction, while simultaneously sowing distrust between them and their parents.

Santa distracts from Jesus

Allie’s second reason for ditching St. Nick is that he draws the focus away from Christ.

“Santa Claus is the one who will give you all of your immediate desires and will fulfill all of the temporary pleasure that you long for because he is giving you something in the form of a tangible gift. ... It's no wonder that we as people, but especially children, have such a hard time actually focusing on Christ — the real gift-giver,” she says.

To Santa sympathizers who argue that his mysterious nature “makes Christmas really magical” and stimulates children’s imaginations, Allie says that we can still foster imagination in our kids without lying to them.

And further, “The reality is that there is already a beautiful mystery of Christmas that no one truly understands,” she says. “We are natural people who were intersected by the supernatural when Jesus became Emmanuel, God with us, made flesh. That is the mystery of Christmas.”

“And so why would we create a counternarrative to that? A cheapened narrative, a legalistic narrative that gives all of the wrong lessons about morality and about what saves you and about what satisfies you and about what fulfills you?” she asks.

But Santa doesn’t just distract kids from the true Christmas story; he also distracts parents, who are stressed and spread thin trying to maintain the Santa narrative through elaborate gift displays, Elf on the Shelf, staging half-eaten cookies, and dodging pesky questions from their kids.

“It seems like when that starts to be the taker of our joy or the source of our stress and our energy and not discipling our kids and telling them what the advent, the coming of the Lord, actually means in their lives, well, then we have veered into idolatry,” Allie warns.

To hear the rest of her argument, as well as ways Christians can still incorporate Santa into their Christmas season without losing focus on what matters, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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Uncovering the surprising truth behind a beloved Christmas hymn



In 1719, Isaac Watts published "Joy to the World" as an interpretation of Psalm 98, with references to Psalm 96 and Genesis 3. Somehow, it became a song usually associated with Christmas. But it’s not a Christmas carol or hymn. It’s not about Advent.

By the way, "advent" simply means the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event. So "Joy to the World" isn’t about the arrival of Christ in the manger. Instead, it’s about the second Advent. It’s about the Second Coming of Christ.

We cannot isolate the humiliated Christ from the exalted Christ.

The first and second Advents are very different. We sometimes refer to the first coming of Christ as his “humiliation” because he condescended to us. He took on the likeness of sinful flesh. He was born into a lowly condition — a poor family in a tiny village no one cared about.

As Galatians 4 explains, he was made under the law. He experienced all the miseries, pain, and difficulties of this life. He walked much more than a mile in our shoes. He endured the wrath of God and the curse of death on the cross. Then, he was buried and, for a time, continued under the power of death.

Our God did that. The eternal Lord, the maker of all things. It was humiliating — and it would be tragic if the gospel story ended there.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ... And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ... If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. ... But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.

Christ didn’t stay in the grave. He was resurrected. This marked the beginning of what we call the exaltation of Christ — his rising from the dead on the third day, his ascending into heaven, his sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and his coming to judge the world at the last day.

Christ is no longer a little baby or a poor peasant. He is the exalted king of the world.

It has been my observation — and the observation of others — that many Christians, especially those of a liberal bent, tend to emphasize the humiliation of Christ: his accessibility, his humanity, his humility, his willingness to wash feet and eat with sinners, his willingness to die and lay down his life.

All those things are good and true when kept in their proper place. But we cannot isolate the humiliated Christ from the exalted Christ.

Unfortunately, that does happen in some circles.

There was a movement called the emerging church (or emergent church) that began in the late 1990s and became largely irrelevant by the mid-2000s. My wife, Emily, and I were loosely involved for a year or two. It questioned the shape of American Christianity, raising some good points. Personally, I was drawn to its critique of churches that prioritized performance over community.

The enthroned king, the coming judge, the one who demands every knee to bow — is not so easily reshaped into a liberal fiction.

But over time, it became clear that the movement was little more than a Trojan horse for liberalism. I remember attending a meeting of local pastors in early 2005 at the now-defunct Cincinnati Bible College. The gathering included Presbyterians, Reformed Baptists, Methodists, Churches of Christ, and others. It was a sort of ecumenical group.

One pastor there — a proponent of the emerging church — was pushing us to work more closely with other religions. Thankfully, no one agreed. The group pushed back hard, affirming that Jesus is the only way to God the Father. It was a good moment.

At one point, this pastor said something like, “You guys only want to talk about the exaltation of Christ, not the incarnation of Christ.” I didn’t fully grasp the significance of that remark until later, when I discussed it with a pastor I respected.

He connected the dots for me. Christ in his humility is easier to treat like a mere man, like an equal. He can be twisted into a “nice guy” who says, “Come as you are,” accepts everyone just as they are, and serves merely as an example of servanthood. But the exalted Christ — the enthroned king, the coming judge, the one who demands every knee to bow — is not so easily reshaped into a liberal fiction.

This pastor wanted to downplay the exaltation of Christ to emphasize a distorted version of his humiliation. But the first and second Advents cannot be separated. They are intrinsic to God’s plan of salvation and essential to the gospel message.

Listen to how Hebrews 4 ties together Christ’s humiliation and exaltation:

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

It’s Christ’s humiliation that gives us confidence, he can sympathize with us. It’s Christ’s exaltation that assures us, he can deliver mercy and grace in our time of need.

These truths are inseparable and intertwined in the gospel message.

This connection helps us understand why "Joy to the World" became associated with Christmas. It’s a song celebrating the eventual victory of what began in Bethlehem.

Christmas finds its ultimate fulfillment in all creation singing the praise of the exalted and victorious savior-king.

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