It’s the most wonderful time of the year! OK, maybe not THE most, but it IS time for my annual seasonally-themed diaries. It’s been a tradition since 2010, with topics ranging from music to food to ugly sweaters and Hallmark movies. You can find them all using the tag #seasonal (which also includes great diaries by other folks!), and I do in fact have a spreadsheet to keep track!
In case you’re going “but I don’t celebrate Christmas, is this for me?” the answer is a resounding yes! While my personal perspective is non-miracle-based but does culminate in an evergreen tree, stockings and presents, these diaries are for everyone. If you celebrate a holiday in December that makes you happy, that you mark differently than other days, or involves negotiating who brings what food where and/or a family newsletter… or even if there isn’t... this is a place for you and I really hope you’ll bring yourself to the comments!
December crept up very quickly this year! I was pulling out the crates of seasonal decorations while still stuffed on Thanksgiving leftovers! Casa Brillig isn’t a hard and fast “We Decorate Thanksgiving Weekend” family; no, we do so gradually over the course of days or weeks, depending on what else is going on and how much energy we have. I generally decorate the house, and Mr. Brillig is responsible for getting any outdoor lighting as well as lights on our annual Christmas tree. But with December 1st right here, I HAD to get at least a few things up… bows over the windows, holiday table runners on the sideboards and other flat surfaces, and the most important things…
Advent Calendars! Traditionally they were used to count the days of Advent, which began on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Since that date varies each year, most modern calendars count the first 24 days of December. They’ve generally got 24 little doors or flaps or boxes hiding a surprise such as chocolate, a small figurine, etc. The item for December 24th is often extra special, as it is Christmas Eve.
There are SO. MANY. DIFFERENT. Advent calendars. Some are reuseable and some are meant to be a single-December item. An online search will give literally tens of thousands of them, ranging from perfume to chocolate to whiskey to rubber ducks (which Casa Brillig can confirm was a lot of fun last year!). For the second year, K1 and her partner were gifted a LEGO Star Wars calendar, and over the course of the month have/will build and set a whole scene with the included items.
We have four this year. Two are cherished and decades old, one is relatively new and the fourth is our annual one-use that changes every year. Let me show them to you.
This is our oldest Advent calendar. My mother gave it to Mr. Brillig and I the first Christmas after we were married, way back in 1992. It’s got our last name on it, because Mom Brillig was, like so many of her generation, very fond of personalized things. I’m pretty sure every item we own with our last name on it was a gift from my Mom.
There are 24 little handmade items in those pockets, and they hang on the little gold balls. Or are supposed to. They fall off a lot, which has led over the years to finding new ways to wrap the strings around the gold balls in hopes of making them stay put.
Also, four of the little handmade items are now, well, replacement items. Our first pup, for whom I am usernamed here, thought that dropped Advent Calendar items were treats and nibbled those four to bits! Oops!
I think about my Mom, who’s been gone since 2001, every time I bring this calendar out. When she’d come to visit during the holidays, it always made her smile to see it. It hangs in our foyer, the first thing you see when you enter our house every December.
Next up is our beloved Playmobil Advent Calendar (#3942, to be precise). It was sold in 2000, and we purchased it when K1 was only a few years old. We’ve been assembling the scene almost every year since.
The 24 boxes each contain one piece of a lovely and serene woodland scene, with various woodland and farm animals along with troughs, food for the animals and of course, Santa and a sleigh. When K1 and later K2 were smaller, they would play with the figurines, add additional animals or small figures (Polly Pocket figurines fit exactly, I seem to remember!) and it is a treasured part of my holiday to see it come to life each year.
::cue Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Float Announcer Voice::
Our next Advent Calendar is making its third appearance at Casa Brillig. During the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, and continuing to this day, yours truly MAY have developed just a small addiction fond obsession centering around Target’s Featherly Friends Decorative Birds. While I do not own even a sizeable fraction of the hundreds released over the past 12 years, I do own enough to decorate seasonally. Obviously Target’s decisionmaking fails this year have limited expansion, but this calendar is a 2023 addition to my collection.
It only has 12 spots, suggesting it is supposed to mark the 12 Days Of Christmas, December 25 (Christmas) thru January 5th (Epiphany). I generally start it on December 13th, so it finishes at the same time as all the other calendars. Maybe this year I’ll try it the other way!
Last but not least is this year’s brand-new, single use calendar from my favorite spice shop (and hopefully yours), Penzeys. Each day contains a trial-sized bag of one of their spices. Given the majority of our spice drawer… erm, and cabinet… umm, and that shelf with the big bags to fill our little jars… is from Penzeys, we’re sure to have tried many of these, but the website has a link where for each day’s packet they’ll provide recipes, so we’re eager to get some new ideas for our favorites AND hopefully try some new blends!
That’s Casa Brillig’s way to mark the month of December! Do you have calendars like this, or did you growing up? Do you have another tradition that’s similar for your own tradition? If so, come chat in the comments!
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