Dr Gavin Ashenden is an opinionated fellow and may be a strong candidate for a seat in the Cabinet along with everyone else. This week, the Catholic commentator – and former Anglican bishop – took aim at advent calendars. These items, Dr Ashenden warned, are “damaging Christianity” and have become a sign of society’s “spiritual illiteracy”.
“The job of advent is to clear the clutter of our lives away,” he thundered, “so that we have some space to welcome Christ when we celebrate the feast of the incarnation. But instead of decluttering and opening up every room for God, we are filling up every hole with money and excess.”
The man has a point. For some years, advent calendars have been getting silly. The department store Liberty is often blamed for starting the silliness, having launched a £149 version in 2014 that contained various mini beauty products. But since then, the situation has snowballed. Now, an estimated 16½ million advent calendars are sold in the UK annually.
We’re not talking the calendars that feature sweet painted scenes of a manger in Bethlehem, with windows that open to reveal a shepherd holding a lantern and a wise man proffering a parcel wrapped in cloth. Bor-ing! No, we’re talking big, fat, chunky advent calendars that cost hundreds or even thousands of pounds, with windows that conceal various little – or quite large – presents. I’m not hugely religious, but I do feel slightly squeamish at the idea of celebrating this time of year with an advent calendar that contains small bottles of serum and eye cream.
Then there are the jewellery advent calendars that have diamond earrings tucked behind one window, a diamond necklace behind another. Earlier this month, Vogue ran a piece headlined “The Best Jewellery Advent Calendars for Chic Accessorising this Christmas”, and while it’s admirable to want to look nice for baby Jesus, I can’t help thinking he’s not the main impetus behind this demented craze for new diamonds every morning. Such calendars are deeply vulgar and, I’m sorry to say, a tiny bit common.
“Traditional nativity advent calendars only” is the belief system I’ve inherited from my mother, although I reckon you could probably sneak one of those stately-home calendars past her. Chatsworth and Blenheim are selling pretty ones for under a tenner. If you’re a royalist, you could buy one of a cartoon Highgrove, which doesn’t feature a donkey or a manger, but does include a corgi, labrador and pheasant.
Wouldn’t you rather face a cartoon pheasant every morning in December than a sex-toy advent calendar from a website called Lovehoney, which comes with various products I don’t think we need to go into? This time of year is tiring enough already. (Although, if you’re interested, Lovehoney has already knocked the price down and it’s now a mere £135 instead of £425.)
Pet-food companies have also got in on the act, in case your dog or cat is a practising Christian. John Lewis is punting one that contains chicken, duck and salmon mini fillets, but I wouldn’t recommend it because the reviews underneath aren’t terribly good. “Our cats wouldn’t touch these treats,” reports one disappointed customer. “We gave them to the chickens, they wouldn’t eat them. We put some out for the badgers, they left them. Big thumbs down from all the animals.”
Bonne Maman has produced a calendar with mini-pots of apricot jam and various marmalades behind the windows. Fortnum’s, which really should know better, is offering various food-centred advent calendars. Walker’s has disgraced itself with a shortbread advent calendar. Off with its Royal Warrant, quite frankly.
I suspect my antipathy towards such advent calendars stems from the fact that, in recent years, it’s become de rigueur for people to give them to their godchildren. All very well; we’re in charge of their spiritual development, after all. And what a lovely idea, on one level, because I can remember the excitement I felt as a child every December, skipping downstairs to open another window and discover that the shepherd was indeed holding a lantern and, what a surprise, the wise man was clutching a parcel.
But I suspect most children these days want a chocolate advent calendar at the very least, and I can’t quite bring myself to sink that low. “Dear Agamemnon, please become spiritually enriched with this advent calendar that has a different flavour Lindor ball behind each door. Lots of love, Godmother Sophia.” Is that my role?
Also, the Lindor ball advent calendar is £15 and I have 10 godchildren, which means 10 advent calendars, and you’ve got to be in finance or tech to run to that sort of largesse now. I’m already worrying about their Christmas presents, because godparents can be quite competitive about these things (“I’m thinking of getting darling Agamemnon a mini Range Rover. What about you?”).
If you’re in a similar predicament, here’s a little tip: I went to a Christmas fair recently and discovered a sweet independent business called Chuckle Soaps, which makes organic bars of translucent soap with mini figures encased within them – cowboys, mermaids, firemen, and so on. You have to make vigorous use of the soap at bath time for several weeks to release the figure, and I reckon that’s quite a jolly present for £6.50.
I should possibly caveat all this, however, with an admission. A few weeks ago, my doorbell rang, and I stepped outside to find an enormous and extremely heavy box on the doormat. Having dragged it inside like a Viking bringing home an elk, I ripped into the box to discover an advent calendar bursting with goodies. My friend Jenn, the beauty director at Elle, had sent me one of the magazine’s advent calendars, stuffed with creams and candles and hair mists and a lavender pillow spray (I know this, because I opened every window immediately).
Forgive me, Dr Ashenden, for I have sinned. But in my defence, I didn’t pay for it myself – and I shall have lovely skin for Midnight Mass.
"vulgar" - Google News
November 18, 2023 at 08:00PM
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‘Jewellery advent calendars are deeply vulgar and, I’m sorry to say, a tiny bit common’ - Yahoo Canada Finance
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