Advent has always been one of my favourite seasons of the year. Legally, and liturgically, Advent began this year on Sunday December 3rd. But for most people’s purposes, Advent starts on December 1st when you get to open the first of the little doors.

Growing up, Advent was always counted down in two ways in our house: one, a conventional calendar and two, an Advent candle. The candle stood on the tea table, and each day we burned down another one of the little gold segments. (At least, that was the plan. In reality, we sometimes all had our noses stuck in books and would inadvertently burn through several days at once before someone noticed. Not to mention ending up with candlewax all over the tablecloth.)

Fast-forward a couple of decades, to those dim and distant days of the internet when the phrase “social media” had yet to be invented, and the medium in which most of my friends chose to be social was a blogging platform called LiveJournal. For several years running, I managed to persuade a bunch of LJ’ers to manufacture “some means of counting down the days of Advent”, and post them around the country to each other. I think most people created calendars in the usual format, but there were some wildly creative ideas being sent around - often between people who had never, in the real world, met.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I have, fundamentally, not grown out of the concept of Advent calendars. I enjoy tracking the steady progress through December to Christmas - which goes at just the same speed as any other month, whatever anyone tells you. This year I have three countdowns on the go: a conventional calendar, an Advent tree, and a role-playing game.

The conventional one features some very hairy cattle, and is actually a combined Christmas card and calendar, sent to me by a friend who lives on a Yorkshire farm (surrounded by not-especially-hairy dairy cattle). Its tiny doors are opening to reveal various woodland creatures - today was a fox and two cubs.

The tree is a tradition which I invented, wholesale, about a decade ago. I usually travel to visit family at Christmas, so don’t have a Christmas tree in my own home. Instead, I have a little wooden tree (which folds flat into a wardrobe the rest of the year), and a box of baubles. Every day, I add a bauble to the tree and - because I haven’t yet accrued 24 of them - every year I acquire a new bauble. I am using the term “bauble” loosely - as you can see from the exceedingly not-spherical felted dinosaur hanging front-and-centre in the picture above. This year’s acquisition was unexpectedly presented to me on Sunday, by a friend who replaced her Christmas cards this year with crocheted festive octopuses. Did you know a festive octopus was a thing? No? Well, neither did I. But now I have one, and it will go on the Advent tree.

The role-playing game is from the lovely people at Black Armada. Advent of Abomination is their December Patreon gift, although you can also buy a copy. When this month’s email rolled in, with the news that they were producing “an advent calendar that’s also a solo folk horror TTRPG”, I felt that it couldn’t really have been aimed more specifically at me if it had tried. I immediately printed it out, scored its windows, and glued it up. Six days in, and I’m having a thoroughly lovely time working my way through the story prompts. Plus, of course, it has the added benefit of making sure I do at least some writing every day. (I’ve always had very strong feelings that Advent calendars should have 24 doors, not 25 - since this one actually has 31, I’m not entirely sure where I stand!)

A couple of years ago I bought The Ticking World’s Adventure Calendar, which combined Advent with a choose-your-own-adventure game. Sadly they’ve sold out this year, although it looks from some of their retweets as if someone is streaming their own experiences of the Adventure on Twitch. They’ve also mentioned that there will be an all-new Adventure Calendar next year, so I’ll be keeping my eye on that.

Many moons ago, a good friend gave me a copy of The Christmas Mystery, by Jostein Gaarder. It’s a short novel, following a boy with an Advent calendar, and is told one-chapter-per-day - making it excellent as a calendar in itself, because you can read it in “real time”.

Although I am still firmly in favour of opening a little cardboard door to reveal a picture each day, there’s a whole world of alternate possibilities. Are you tracking Advent? If so, how?