Growing up, my sister and I were never allowed a chocolate Advent calender. We got ones behind the cardboard doors of which were mounted tiny holiday scenes, of people skating and exchanging gifts. We didn't even know chocolate calenders existed until one year my grandparents, who sent us one each every year, picked up what my mother declared the Wrong Sort. One wasn't too bad. It just had tiny plastic trinkets behind its doors. The other was the Advent equivalent of Evil Incarnate: it bore chocolate. Bite-sized pieces of reindeer-shaped chocolate. My sister and I were forced to share that year and bitter were those twenty-four days, split between daft crappy pendents and mouthwateringly divine breakfast chocolate.
My grandparents received a stern warning and thereafter it was back to the small printed scenes.
My mum can recall a time when she was reprimanded by her mother for wasting her pocket money on Mars bars. 'I can't wait until I grow up,' she announced passionately, 'then I can eat Mars bars all day if I want to! For breakfast, lunch and dinner!' She recalls this somewhat wistfully, because these days she thinks Mars bars are awful and has never fulfilled her childhood dream of chocolate morning, noon and night.
I, on the other hand, have taken to rectifying that sad December each year, by choosing with careful deliberation which chocolate Advent will mark down the days till Christmas. In spite of the trauma so many years ago, I still share mine with Matthew, though we missed getting on last year so this year we get one each!
But we couldn't decide which we liked more, Transformers or Simpsons, so we've decided to swap them every other day. We will be such positive models for our children.
Children? Have I missed an anouncement?!
Posted by: Lix | December 13, 2009 at 08:52 PM
My mom made us an advent calendar with teeny strings for tying on sweets. Unfortunately, she made it when Kidlet #2 was a baby and the strings are too tiny for tying more than one candy per day. With Kidlet #3 in the works, I think it's time I ask her for a larger one!
Posted by: 'Lista | December 12, 2009 at 08:36 PM
When I worked at the Science Museum, we had a departmental advent calander (chocolate, obviously) with a *rota* worked out every year for who'd get to open what box.
Seriously. A rota for an advent calander. Sort of sums up working in an office, doesn't it?
Posted by: alice | December 11, 2009 at 01:08 PM