First Sunday of Advent: Calendars

One of my memories of Advent is the excitement of opening a new door on my Advent calendar each day.  I'm not sure I comprehended the waiting concept of Advent, but the calendar took me through the month of December as a sort of "countdown" to Christmas.  It both built the excitement of a little girl for Christmas as well as forced me to wait... "You mean there's STILL 22 days till Christmas?!?"  It seemed like forever!  Wait.

The tradition of Advent calendars is debated.  What is most common among sources is that the tradition comes from 19th Century Protestant Germany (some specifically say Lutheran).  The "calendar" began as a countdown to Christmas with a chalk mark on the door, lighting a candle for each day (similar to today's Advent wreath), or hanging a picture on the wall each of the 24 days.  The earliest known handmade calendar was from 1856.  As the tradition spread, these calendars developed into pieces of cardboard with 24 candies attached or a blank calendar to which one would attach a picture to each day.  Production of printed calendars with a door to open every day began in the early 20th Century.  According to the Richard Sellmer-Verlag (publishing house) (http://www.sellmer-verlag.de/) it was at this time when the calendars became religious "with Bible verses instead of pictures behind the doors."

"The Little Town"
Richard Sellmer-Verlag's first printed Advent calendar, 1946

During WWII the production of cardboard Advent calendars came to a halt, as cardboard was rationed and printing pictured calendars was forbidden. Richard Sellmer-Verlag was founded in Stuttgart and with permission granted by American authorities on 9 December, 1946 began printing calendars.  By the 1950s, Sellmer-Verlag had become known as the "Home of the Advent Calendar".  Sellmer-Verlag continues to be family-run, now run by Richard Sellmer's grandsons and is the only publishing house in Germany to print only Advent calendars.

Everywhere I look around here there are Advent calendars.  Similar to the US, Christmas "stuff" was out well before Thanksgiving, though Germany doesn't pay attention to when Thanksgiving is!  There are many, many of the tag board calendars of every size with various pictures and themes from the overly-religiousy ones to the rather crude ones which I will leave to your imagination to describe, and everything in between.  Then, there are the more traditional German Advent calendars.  They are wooden frames, somewhat like a shadowbox, with a small package in each day's space.  Or sometimes a fabric wall-hanging to which one can attach a button or picture.

So, we wait.  We wait for the coming of Jesus.  "Christ is coming, of his own will, by his own strength, and out of his own love."[1]  Today we light the first candle, the candle of Hope.

And we wait.

Pax.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics.