Wednesday 15 December 2010

'Tis the season.

It is the season to drink Earl Grey tea again, since the sky has a tendency to be gray and cloudy, and eat Lebkuchen. And bake "Weihnachtsplätzchen" (christmas cookies). And meet with friends and chat or watch a film together, and stay up way too late because it's so nice. And find something yummy in the advent calendar each day.

When I was a child, the yearly advent calendar with chocolate in it was an absolute must, and all my school colleagues had one as well (plus, in the first few years of school, there was one for the class, and someone different got to open a door every day). And when I got older, that somehow stayed a well-loved tradition for me, as it did for many others of my generation - most of our friends also have a calendar at home.

And because I am a curious person, I checked Wikipedia which in the English version says that advent calendars are mainly produced for children. Well, not so in Germany, where you can find all sorts of advent calendars for grown-ups and very clearly for those only - like those where you get a "Schnapspraline" (chocolate filled with liquid hard liquor) every day. And now I'm wondering... is that really a German thing?
If it is... I think you are missing out. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My mother refused to get an "ugly advent calendar with bad chocolate, when we can get a pretty shiny one with pictures *and* have all the good chocolate we want every day". (The chocolate advent calendars you could get where we were had the cheapest chocolate available, the gritty kind with 28% cacao.) I had to admit that it was a reasonable argument (good chocolate always is.) Once I got one with good chocolate from my grand-aunt. I still fondly remember it. (And it was only moderately ugly.)

a stitch in time said...

Yes, the chocolate calendars for children have the cheap chocolate in them - but somehow, exactly that cheap chocolate from the calendars is a part of my childhood memories of this time of year. And I'm a milk chocolate person anyways - I guess that if you tend more towards the darker chocolates, those calendars would indeed be very disappointing.