Let’s Celebrate! Countdown to Christmas with Advent Calendars

Growing up as a Vietnamese immigrant and Catholic, I have never heard about or knew about the Advent calendar, which is special calendar used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. I guess this is a Western tradition? And it would have been a lot more fun and easier to count down to Christmas with a special calendar back then. Oh well…but my parents did have other traditions for us growing up so I don’t think I missed out on much.

As I have my own kids now, I want to start new traditions for my family. One of them is that we have an advent calendar. My goal is to make an advent calendar for our whole family to share. I’m giving myself two more years to put something together…stay tuned! For now, I’m purchasing advent calendars as a fun way for the whole family to countdown to our first Christmas as a family of 5!

I think what really got me into advent calendars this year was when I saw that the chocolate shop A La Mere de Famille from Paris announcing the release of tbe A L Mere de Famille advent calendar on their Instagram page, which includes all their best chocolates and happens to be only available n Paris and the rest of Europe. And then I saw that Laduree was going to release their first ever advent calendar this year. Suddenly, this Francophile felt the need to get an advent calendar from Paris for the 2018 advent season. I was able to find the advent calendar from Angelina (famous for its hot chocolate in Paris). Thank goodness I didn’t have to travel to Paris to get mine, I found the Angelina advent calendar at Neiman Marcus (online). I also got my hands on the A La Mere de Famille’s advent calendar (thanks to a coworker who was in Paris and brought it back for me). I mean, who doesn’t love an advent calendar filled with sweet treats, especially from Paris.

So enough about advent calendars for me. Las year we got Luke the Hot Wheels advent calendar (because he loves cars) and it was such a hit! I’m not sure I want more Hot Wheels cars around my house so this year, we got Luke a Lego City advent calendar. Does he need more Legos? Charlie’s answer is yes. My answer…as long as it helps him count down to Christmas. He does have a lot of Legos too!

Since we have our advent calendars ready to eat and play for December 1st. I wanted to share other fun advent calendars that we also considered.