advent calendars

I have loved, and opened, doors to at least one Advent calendar every day of December since I was little.

The one hanging on my wall today is from the early 1960s. This I can tell by the illustrations of ladies who dress like Marmee from the waist up and like June Cleaver from the waist down. Printed in small type at the bottom is “Made in Western Germany.” The calendar happened into my hands when I passed through my childhood hometown one day many years ago and saw a dear friend having a garage sale. When I gasped at this beautiful piece of art and history, she kindly insisted I take it.

It’s quite large, and shows a bustling street at Christmastime: a vendor selling steaming-hot chestnuts; a smiling baker carrying a teetering, towering cake; a little boy holding his sister’s hand. Here and there, in snowbanks and on rooftops, the makers added bits of real glitter. It’s that lovely … and this is with its doors closed.

Back in the ‘60s, Advent calendar doors did not house chocolates or miniature bottles of booze, as they typically do today. And though I throw no stones at folks who, every day this month, down the amount of bottom-shelf brandy that would placate a field mouse, I like best the calendars that hide images behind their doors.

Every year, I open doors that lead me to a girl going ice skating and a mother at the milliners’, trying on hats. There’s a dad reading the newspaper while smoking a pipe (if you needed further proof of era). A kid practicing the clarinet in an upstairs window. Some images I remember each year before I see them; some I don’t. I love the ones with a little humor: Day 14, shown above, conceals a doggie in the window — a wink and a bark to Patti Page’s 1953 hit.

But while the images are the same every year, I don’t find them dull; I find them comforting. Because the world doesn’t look the same this year as it looked last year, or 17 years ago, or in the early ‘60s. I’m not the same each year, that’s for sure. So I like coming back to my Advent calendar to feel grounded, and I suspect most others feel the same about their holiday decorations. After all, every year around this time — of our own volition — we all go up to our attics on a Saturday and unbox, unwind, and set everything up. Many or all of the pieces are ones we have loved for years or even generations. We want what we know.

Christmastime is an annual YOU ARE HERE at the trailhead of the new year, and we want and need something familiar — whether it be beautiful, quirky, what have you — to set us up for it. To bring us back to center, give us a moment of calm and peace, and get us ready for what’s next. May it be so.