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The History of Advent and Chocolate
Within our lifetime, chocolate – and particularly advent calendars – have become synonymous with Christmas!
Both associated with joy, warmth, and sharing a little Winter treat, chocolate and Christmas seem to go hand in hand – and the one beloved tradition that combines all these elements is the Advent calendar. However, it’s surprising just how recently the Advent Calendar has become associated with chocolate – especially when the concept of Advent itself has been around for thousands of years.
Hang tight for a whirlwind tour of how combining chocolate with the countdown to Christmas came to be!
When a child is born...
Advent, which is believed to have derived from the Latin word “adventus,” meaning “coming” or “arrival,” has its roots in the Christian tradition. It was seen to mark the season of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, or seen as a time which marked Christ’s second coming to the world to judge humanity. The observance of Advent can be traced back to the 4th or 5th century when Christians began dedicating a period of time before Christmas to prayer and reflection.
That sense of reflection has been somewhat lost since then, as Advent has become a time of excitement and anticipation for the upcoming festivities of Christmas. Advent traditionally began on the Sunday closest to the feast of St. Andrew (30th November) and ended on Christmas Day. The four-Sunday Advent had a different number of days to the modern one according to when Christmas Day fell in the week – whereas your typical Advent calendar will now begin from 1st December instead. Initially this was a feature that was intended to allow them to be reused each year – not something that exactly happens today!
marking advent the traditional way
Dating back as far as it does, it’s difficult to know exactly how long Advent has been a time of such significance; but it’s thought that it was first celebrated as far back as AD567 – this is when monks would fast in the month leading up to Christmas.
Far removed from the idea of fasting now, “marking” Advent has been noted from the early nineteenth century as the time German Protestants began to mark the days of Advent. This was signified either by burning a candle for the day or, more simply, marking walls or doors with a line of chalk each day.
A tradition of the Advent “Wreath” is believed to have originated in the “Rauhes Haus” in Hamburg around 1838, an institute for orphaned and neglected boys (literally meaning “Rough House” in English). An Advent Wreath is made from a circle of intertwined evergreen branches, which is meant to symbolise the idea of never-ending life. Placed on top of this wreath are five candles. Four of these candles, which are typically red, are placed on the outside of the wreath, whilst the fifth candle – traditionally white – sits in the middle. The four exterior candles represent one of the four Sundays of Advent, whilst the fifth candle marks Christmas day.
A new practice of hanging an image every day ultimately led to the creation of the first known handmade, wooden, Advent calendar in 1851. Sometime in the early twentieth century the first printed calendars appeared, followed by Gerhard Lang’s innovation of adding small doors in the 1920s; Gerhard Lang became known as the “inventor of Advent calendars”; he regularly published new and playful variants with graphic design by well-known children’s book illustrators in his Munich publishing house from 1904/1908 onwards. He is credited with creating the first Advent calendar that could be filled with chocolate from as early as 1926.
now with added chocolate!
While the early Advent calendars featured religious themes, it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that chocolate made its sweet entrance into this holiday tradition. The 1950s was an important decade for the development of the British Christmas in particular; it saw the first mass wave of working-class affluence and many parents wanted to give their children what they had never had. Spending on presents rose dramatically and traditions such as Christmas trees became more widespread across the social scale. The first chocolate-filled Advent calendars reportedly appeared on the scene in the 1950s, and Cadbury began commercially producing them in 1971; they however did not put them into continuous production until 1993. The fact that it was not until the 1990s that chocolate calendars became the norm is evidence of both how quickly new traditions can become established and how recent some of our Christmas practices actually are!
The advent calendars that we know now are an entity that can help us to note the passing of time in the whirlwind month that is December, and can help you count down the days until the big one. In recent years, calendars are also beginning to take on larger (and more expensive!) forms too, with advent calendars that contain everything from socks and beauty products, to teabags and treats for your cat.
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