Virtual Advent Calendar: New Tradition

It’s the 19th day of the 2020 Virtual Advent Tour, hosted by my friend Sprite at Sprite Writes. For my day of the Tour, I’m going to talk about my Advent calendar. I grew up with the paper type of Advent calendar that was popular when I was a kid during the ’70s. I probably would have bought something similar for my kids. But, before I got around to it, I happened to mention to my mom that I’d seen some cute Advent calendars with little drawers for holding gifts, and next thing I knew, I was the proud owner of this:

Isn’t it great? There’s only one problem: the drawers are tiny! Nothing bigger than a couple of Hershey’s Kisses will fit inside.

I didn’t want to give the kids chocolate every day, though. By the time Advent rolls around, they’re just coming off their Halloween sugar high, and the last thing they need is more candy. So I had to come up with another solution.

What fits best, I eventually found, are messages on paper folded up small, and that’s how our Christmas Tickets came to be. I make the Christmas Tickets on my computer. Each one is an invitation to a family activity (game night, movie night, a Christmas craft, etc.), or a coupon that can be redeemed for a special treat (cocoa, popcorn, etc.), or the first clue of a treasure hunt leading to small gifts (new Christmas ornaments, books for story time, etc.). It’s a lot of work, and sometimes I struggle to come up with ideas that suit both them and me. But the rewards are that it makes the children happy and that we spend a lot of time together as a family.

Because this isn’t the way my parents celebrated Advent when I was a kid, it’s not a family tradition. I guess you could say it’s a new tradition. It may sound like an oxymoron, but I can’t think of anything better to call it. Anyway, I like this new tradition. I hope that when my kids grow up they will look back on it fondly, and maybe even make it an old tradition.

How about you? Have you created any new holiday traditions for yourself?