Create an Advent calendar of experiences

A fun way to make the holidays more meaningful

Judging by the number of ads I’m seeing, lots of people enjoy using an Advent calendar to count down the days until Christmas. The general idea is that you open a little door and find a new delight each day. Often it’s candy. But you can also find calendars with tiny bottles of scotch (I’m not kidding), containers of slime (I wish I were kidding), or toy trucks.

These calendars should technically start on the first Sunday in Advent — that is November 30th this year — but they tend to go from December 1st until the 25th.

I’m not sure how many of us need more sugar, scotch, or slime in our lives, but if your family celebrates Christmas, there is a fun way to keep the delight while minimizing the clutter: create an Advent calendar of experiences.

25 days of fun

Here’s how this works. You brainstorm a list of 25 holiday or winter-themed activities, such as singing Christmas carols, drinking hot chocolate with peppermint marshmallows, decorating cookies, making paper snowflakes, going to a local production of A Christmas Carol, reading A Christmas Carol, listening to The Nutcracker Suite, watching Home Alone, driving to a nearby neighborhood with over-the-top lights, and seeing Santa at the zoo.

Then, look at your calendar for December, and figure out which activities would go best with each day. In general, busy weekdays should be low-key (hot chocolate for dessert), and time-specific ideas need to match with a time you can go (you’ll need tickets for A Christmas Carol). Classic activities like getting your tree, or hanging stockings, can also go on particular days when you usually do these things.

Be flexible

It’s up to you if your calendar should make these ideas visible or not. Some people like looking forward to things. Others like to open those little doors and find something unexpected. If you go with the latter, you can buy a simple calendar and then put slips of paper with your experiences behind the door. Then set a general time when you open the door and enjoy your fun, perhaps with a little flexibility thrown in. If you chose a particular day to get your tree, and that day dawns with freezing rain, maybe you just open the next day’s door and move tree-choosing forward.

To be sure, creating an Advent calendar of experiences is more work than buying an Advent calendar of slime. But if you are the person making the calendar, you get to pick what experiences go in. It’s possible that your favorites (watching A Christmas Story?) might get preference for inclusion over things you’re less fond of. And really, this will only be a lot of work the first year. If your family enjoys the experiences, next year you can just pull out this year’s list and use it as a starting point. You might sub in a few items, but you won’t be starting from a blank page. Your calendar will be mostly ready to go — and that can fill the holiday with good cheer.