How we do Advent

Plus, a Lebkuchen recipe you’ll bake every year

Why I am such a Scrooge about Christmas? I love Christmas. What I don’t like is the excess. No, that’s not quite right. I understand that the excess is part of the point—even before Jesus it was a time of feasting and celebration, a much-needed moment of brightness in the dark months.

What I really object to is that every year and every aspect is supposed to be bigger and better than the last. My inner Scrooge, and inner Puritan, and inner conservative all suspect that every time we make it bigger and better—every time we add something—we also lose something. (Look at me, I’m like a Russian doll of festive misanthropy.)

Here are some examples:

• Presents on Christmas Day isn’t enough—you need a Christmas Eve box. (I know, Christmas Eve presents is a tradition in some countries. But for those of us without this tradition it’s also just another thing to buy.)

• A family photo isn’t enough—you all need to be in matching pyjamas.

• A turkey isn’t enough—you need a turducken.

• A nice outfit isn’t enough—you need a Christmas jumper. (Don’t get me started on Christmas jumpers.)

• Christmas shopping isn’t enough—you need Black Friday. And Cyber Monday. And Black Friday Week!

• An Advent calendar with charming pictures isn’t enough—you need an Advent calendar with chocolate every day. (1993: Cadbury’s puts chocolate calendars into continuous production)

• Chocolate every day isn’t enough—you need a Lego calendar with a new minifigure every day. (1998: Lego makes its first calendar)

No minifigures to see on this Advent calendar

All of these things are beloved traditions for different families around the world, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You probably do some or all of them yourself, and why shouldn’t you?

But they do all involve us spending more money, consuming more stuff, and eventually sending more rubbish to landfill. And although they can bring much joy, I can’t help but feel that the people feeling the most joyous are the CEOs of the companies selling us All That Stuff. Christmas, whatever your religious views, is a time for family and connection. It’s actually not about the stuff (despite what my children firmly believe), and I wonder if the more we go ‘all in’ on the stuff, the further we are from the connection.

Or as someone close to my heart put it:

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”
“Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!”

Me. Via Unsplash

Eloise Rickman

recently shared her own Advent traditions and I am in awe of the ease with which she says:

On Friday, my daughter will open the first window of her beautiful, traditional picture advent calendar.

(She will also open the first window of this Pokemon calendar, which is objectively hideous but certain to bring delight.)

For me, the Advent calendar is one place where I have taken a stand. If my children find out there’s a Pokemon calendar they’ll never forgive me, but this is a risk I’m willing to take.

Here’s what we do.

Years ago I was given a beauty calendar, where each day you opened a box to find a tiny bottle of mascara, or whatever. The beauty products dried up and went in the bin, but the boxes and the little cardboard house they came in were kept. One particularly ambitious year I covered them all in thick paper and turned them into little town houses, with wreaths on the doors and trees in the windows. There’s a labrador trotting down the street, and there’s a black cab and a London bus driving down the road. (How did I manage this burst of activity? I have no idea, but I’m certain it involved the family eating nothing but toast and the house descending into chaos for several weeks.)

Anyway, in each box is a slip of paper with an activity for the day. Always very low-key. I have resisted the temptation to sometimes put little chocolate coins in the box because I know that the moment I do, the children will be disappointed on the days they don’t get chocolate coins. In previous years there has been one gift—a musical book, the equivalent of going to a Christmas show because one of the first years we did this calendar was during Covid, so there were no Christmas shows. This year, for the first time, I’m going to include a trip to a real Christmas show.

The activities have evolved slightly as the children get older. Last year I discovered the 1000 Hours Outside Advent Calendar, and several of my activities come from there. As regular readers will know, getting outside in the winter is essential but challenging, and this is one way of helping us get out of the door.

We don’t manage to do every single activity. Some days the children forget to open the box or we don’t get around to it. Some nights I collapse into bed and think “DRAT, I haven’t got the next activity ready for the flipping calendar!” (but with much less family-friendly language). But overall, the children and I love these little rituals. They love seeing what’s new and revisiting the activities that recur every year. I think we all go into a gentle hibernation over the winter (if we’re lucky enough to be able to), and spending time at home doing crafty things with some Christmassy music playing feels like Just The Thing.

If you like the idea, you could just put 24 activity ideas in a jar and pull one out each day. Or,

Rachael Ringenberg

recently shared this gorgeous Grapat calendar, with the activities already set up for you. Your children won’t mind if you start three days late and do four activities in one day to catch up!

Here’s my rough plan:

1. Make pomanders with oranges and cloves. This is always the 1st Dec activity. I love the smell and how the children get more capable and artistic with it each year. I put the cloves in the box so they rattle around when the children open it, and I’m rather thrilled that the box now smells of cloves even when it’s empty.

2. Get out the Christmas Book Box (post coming soon listing all the books in the box).

3. Make cinnamon playdough

4. Cut out paper snowflakes

5. Melt old broken wax crayons in Christmas silicone moulds

6. Make and post a Christmas card

7. Bake mince pies or jam tarts

8. Paint fingerprint Christmas trees

9. Make clay/salt dough decorations with evergreen leaf prints

10. Paper-chain snowmen

11. Go on a walk to spot Christmas lights (sometimes making a tally chart of what we see)

12. Watch The Snowman (or The Snowy Day which is gorgeous and highly recommended when you need to turn on some Christmas TV. Let’s be honest: we’ll definitely be watching both. And Stick Man. And Father Christmas.)

13. Learn a Christmas carol (we’ll be using this book, try secondhand).

14. Unpack the Christmas decorations

15. Make a cardboard reindeer ornament

16. Read Christmas poems

17. Bake Lebkuchen (recipe at the bottom, it’s by Olivia Potts and it’s the best thing ever.)

18. Make pinecone feeders or similar for the birds

19. Read A Christmas Carol (we have a short version in A World Full of Dickens Stories. Also check out

    Ruth Gaskovski
    ’s post on sharing A Christmas Carol with your family.)

20. Go for a walk to a high spot to watch the sunrise, with hot chocolate and Christmas biscuits

21. Gather greenery to decorate the house

22. Make origami Christmas decorations

23. Make paper chains

24. Hang up your stocking and read ‘The Night Before Christmas’

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I’d love to hear your own traditions, and whether/how you’ve managed to make peace with the Stuff/Joy dichotomy.

If you missed it, and you’re panicking about Christmas shopping, you might like my post of All the things Santa has delivered in previous years, and some other things he might consider. (And relax, at the time of writing we’re still in November, and you’re only panicking because the shops have been telling you it’s Christmas since before Halloween. Bah humbug.)

Just don’t ever tell my children that I knowingly withheld Pokemon calendars. I’ll deny everything.

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Via Unsplash

Olivia Potts’ Lebkuchen Recipe

Makes: 30 biscuits Takes: 5 minutes, plus resting time Bakes: 12-15 minutes

200g honey

85g butter

75g dark brown sugar

250g plain flour

125g ground almonds

Orange zest

1 tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground cloves

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

¼ tsp ground black pepper

¼ tsp ground ginger

1 tsp Baking powder

¼ tsp salt

For decoration (optional)

100g icing sugar

1 lemon, juiced

100g dark chocolate

1. Melt the butter, dark brown sugar and honey together in a small pan over a low heat. Don’t allow to boil.

2. Place the dry ingredients in a large bowl, and stir together. Zest the orange into the dry ingredients.

3. Pour the melted butter honey mixture into the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Rest the dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 160°C, and line two baking trays with non-stick parchment. If you are making rounds of lebkuchen, roll the dough into walnut-sized balls, place them on the baking tray, and gently squish the top of the balls, just to flatten them slightly. If you are stamping shapes out of the dough, take a ball of dough, flatten it, and stamp out using your biscuit cutter before carefully transferring to the tray.

5. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the biscuits are puffed and golden brown. Allow to cool completely before removing from tray.

6. To glaze the biscuits, stir together icing sugar and lemon juice, and dip the upside of each biscuit into the glaze, before setting to one side for the glaze to harden and set. To chocolate-coat the biscuits, melt the chocolate over a bain marie and then dunk the upside of each biscuit into the chocolate, before setting to one side for the chocolate to set.

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