It's the first of December and, therefore, Christmas Season is officially on! I hope you all had a lovely first item in your advent calendars, may it be chocolate, tea, sex toys, Playmobil or what else you may find in an advent calendar these days.
With Christmas Season having commenced, I want to dedicate a daily post to a Christmas topic until the 25th and hope you will enjoy reading about it. Today, I want to write about advent calendars because we all could open the first door today and I guess it was as exciting for you as it was for me. I love anything to do with Christmas and advent calendars are no exception, of course, but, as already mentioned above, there is a myriad of possibilities to choose from and I could imagine parents getting a panic attack when it comes to choose one for their child these days, but I will tell you about my extensive knowledge regarding advent calendars, which ones to choose and which ones not and how to increase the joy of them. I remember that as a child, I always had these nostalgic advent calendars with sparkly pictures of a Christmas scene where, behind the doors, you would only find a picture of a fat angel or a reindeer. I cannot recall I was ever unhappy with these, but, honestly, they are kind of bullshit and if you are not gifting your great-grandmother, I would strongly advise against getting one of these for anyone you know - especially not children. They might pretend to like them (if you've trained them well enough), but they will envy every child with a proper calendar. Now, what is a proper calendar? Chocolate always works, in my humble opinion; however, there is a wide range of chocolate calendars to choose from. I have had Milka, Lindt, Kinder and Smartie calendars and my favourite has always been, and is up to this day, the Kinder advent calendars. I, personally, LOVE Kinder chocolate and especially the Mini Kinder calendars only provide one tiny piece of chocolate per day, so you don't start your day with a stomach ache (still, I prefer the big ones with the Ü-Eier in them). My man and I also started such a calendar in the past years and we bought little gift bags at IKEA for the occasion, but Depot also have great little bags for such a purpose, or, if the gifts are a little bigger, you can also get twenty-four little stockings (see picture) and hang them up to create a prolonged feeling of Christmas gifting. I don't really know when we switched to chocolate calendars, but I know I was pretty happy when we did so. In the beginning, we had the ones with a flat, tiny piece of chocolate, but our calendars grew in breadth and width over the years and it all culminated in a family advent calendar where each one had to buy a sweet or a little gift for one family member (we are five, so it works out nicely until the 25th) and you could open once in a couple of days, but you got bigger and nicer things (like snow globes and cuddly socks). If I ever have children, I will do it the same way because it means you are not only gifted, but also gift someone else and is a specifically joyous moment shared between a family. For a while, we were all really keen on Playmobil advent calendars and I guess they are available for pretty much any bigger toy brand (though I must admit a Barbie calendar must be HUGE). We liked having Playmobil calendars up into our twenties (and occasionally we still get them today) because usually you end up with a Playmobil manger in the end, which is much cooler than a stomach full of chocolate and a pound gained in weight. I think about getting one every year, but normally decide to go with a normal Kinder one in the end because there are so many teeny weeny parts with Playmobil which I usually lose before the manger is even assembled. There was another calendar which piqued my interest very much this year and that was a tea calendar. You get one tea bag of a different flavour each day and can drink it as your morning tea, which sounds utterly wonderful. However, as I am a hardcore black tea drinker in the morning, I ultimately decided I could only have such a calendar if it was only various flavours of black tea - so probably next year. Then there are the kinky ones like the one from Amorelie.at - a sex toy online shop. They have a calendar surprising you every morning with a sex toy, but as the morning is the last time I think of sexual activities, this one wouldn't really be for me, but, hey, maybe next year when my man and I decide it's time to spice up the Christmas time with something other than spiced wine. See, this is the most wonderful thing about advent calendars, you get to choose annually and can try out everything you want, so indulge in your first of December treat (or hopefully you already have) and keep updated with the latest Christmas updates on Floating the Boat.
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Angie
Writer. Editor. Blogger. YouTuber. Freelancer. Traveller. English fanatic. Archives
October 2023
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