This is the point I love: when a series of blog posts starts to shift away from the original idea, into something a little different. Start that on day 2? Sure, why not.
You can read the starting point of the theme here. My original thought was to split the posts into a good number of Christmas Past and Christmas Present.
But as soon as I started thinking about topics, I realised that many of the topics have elements of past and present in them. Together. Because Christmas is about continuity, after all.
So today, it’s time to talk about advent calendars. (It should have been yesterday, really, but
I do like an intro to a theme. Gives me a chance to get myself into gear.)
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Christmas Past
We had the standard cardboard, open a door a day, calendars when I was growing up.
I’m sure there were years when I had to share with my brother and deal with that ‘it’s not your turn to open the door today, it’s mine’ malarkey. (It goes two ways, of course.)
But my heart is tied to the perpetual advent calendar that comes out every year. You can see the opening picture here, if you like.
I was given it as a little girl by one of my aunties. I’m not sure where it came from, or whether it was popular at the time. I haven’t come across one at someone else’s house, but I’m sure they are out there, somewhere.
The point of the calendar is it’s really a series of pictures and little poems, telling the Christmas story in a child-friendly way.
So there are children characters inserted into the story at points to say what’s happening:
a little boy helping out in Joseph’s carpentry workshop; another who sees Mary sitting with nowhere to stay, who takes it upon himself to find a place for the couple to rest.
There is something very peaceful about seeing the same images again, year after year.
Many of the verses have become internalised as I read them over again and again.
Really, as adults looking on at Christmas, we long to recapture something of the innocence along with the anticipation. This calendar is one of my ways in.
I may not always make it through the wardrobe, as it were, into the snowy land beyond. But it offers glimpses, chinks of light.
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Christmas Present
We are well up to date this year. Which means, really, we are catching on to the notion that others have had for quite some time now: the step beyond the chocolate advent calendar and on to the minifig version.
Dan was kindly given a Star Wars Lego advent calendar by another company this year.
(Good thing about the tech world: not afraid to claim toys for the grownups.)
It has been received with great excitement by Junior Reader. This is not just about putting together the little figure, you see – you type in a code on a certain website, Sundays only, and get to play particular Star Wars Lego games.
(I am guessing this is the updated version of the Blue Peter advent crown, for those who want to mark the progression of the weeks of Advent without the potential for setting fire to tinsel.)
If Star Wars is not your thing, I see that Lego has done other versions – as has Playmobil.
I am grateful for the freebie because (revealing my inner Scrooge) these are not cheap.
With grandparents happy to provide the general cardboard version on an annual basis, this is no doubt where we’ll be going next time.
But for now, the piano (which doubles as a mantlepiece) is sporting both a Lego droid and a picture of an angel with a trumpet.
Neither seems to be too concerned about the presence of the other. So far.