This calendar with little chocolates and a picture in it for every day is for little Lucas. We are going to see him on Sunday, the 7th of December, meaning he may find chocolates from number 1 to 7! (Sorry, that we could not give him the calendar before the 1st of December.)

I had every year an Advent Calendar when I was a child. However my calendars never had any chocolates in it. The idea to have chocolates in advent calendars came up many years later. But for the 6th of December, on St. Nicolas Day, we usually got some special pre Christmas treat. The night before that day we had to put our shoes in front of our bedroom door. If we had been ‘good’ children, we would find on the morning of the 6th, that good St. Nicholas had put some delicious things into our shoes, like ginger bread, chocolates, nuts and apples.

http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa113098.htm

“German and Austrian Christmas customs have spread throughout the world wherever Christmas (Weihnachten) is celebrated. From the Christmas tree (Tannenbaum) to “Silent Night” (“Stille Nacht“) and on to the Advent calendar (Adventskalender), people around the globe have adopted many traditions that began in the German-speaking world.”

This is our Advent Crown (Adventskranz) with four candles in it, one for each Sunday of Advent. This Adventskranz has been with us for many years. For each Advent we dig it out again. In times gone past we would of course rather have bought a fresh Adventskranz made of Tannenzweigen (fir-twigs).

We also dig out some old advents calendars every year for advent. The numbers on the calendars go from 1 to 24, which is of course Christmas Eve.