Every year on the first of December people across the world start their advent calendars, but gone are the days of opening the doors and getting a small chocolate or even just a picture; now it is more common to have extravagant and expensive calendars.
One of the most expensive calendars around this year by far is the Wedgewood Fine Bone China calendar which has 24 drawers, all of which have a unique fine Bone China Christmas ornament which can be hung up on the Christmas tree. This calendar is from John Lewis and costs £860.
The second most expensive calendar, costing £210, was from Molton Brown, containing different scented candles, face masks, travel fragrances, body creams and hand lotions. This calendar also had a special scent called Marvellous Mandarin and Spice which has been marketed as smelling like Christmas cake. This is reflected by the kaleidoscope design on the box, which showed all the ingredients and brings people back to their childhood.
Hotel Chocolat has a limited-edition advent calendar, costing £45, with 24 doors, each with a different single-serve sachet of hot chocolate. Flavours range from the traditional, such as salted caramel, all the way to the more obscure, such as mince pie. This advent calendar sold out very quickly, according to staff in the Cheltenham store, who added that the company are planning to make more next year so they are more prepared for the demand.
Some other unique calendars included: Marvel socks, clay face masks, pork scratchings, a puzzle calendar, candles and a Christmas Village advent. These calendars ranged from a discounted price of £8.99 all the way to £45. There are certainly more advent calendars online which all cost a lot more.
But are advent calendars worth buying?
Kathryn Clarke, a craft designer said “I really like buying the No.7 calendar from Boots. On the first of December I like to open the calendar from the back and tip out all the contents on to my bed.” She will then repurpose the calendar and make crafts out of it or even make presents for friends.
Blue said, “I don’t have an advent calendar and I think that’s just because they’re all a little bit expensive,” adding, “if I were to get one I think I’d get a Thorntons one or something posh and snazzy because I find with a lot of the normal ones the chocolate’s a little bit of a lower quality and if I’m going to spend money on an advent calendar I think I’d probably spend a bit more money on a nice one”.
Eleanor said, “me and my sister don’t normally have any traditions surrounding advent calendars but this year we decided to do something a bit different and it started because my sister wanted to make me one of the pick ‘n’ mix Lindt calendars so I wouldn’t know what would be in it. I wanted to get her something in return so I decided to make her an advent calendar full of things that I know she likes.”
Seren was given an advent calendar by one of her friends, however this advent calendar meant even more to Seren “she got me an advent calendar and it was just a normal advent calendar but while I was out she got a hot glue gun and she spent ages researching the brail, and then hot glue gunned brail onto the advent calendar so it says Christmas calendar on it. It says vegan at the bottom and then she did the brail numbers on each of the doors so I can actually tell which one it is, because on normal advent calendars I can’t do unless it’s in order because I can’t tell which door is which, so it almost made me cry, like I was so touched by it. It was so cute.”
From what was available both in stores and online it looks like most, if not all, of the higher end advent calendars have sold out whilst a lot of the cheaper generic calendars are still available and won’t run out any time soon.
