We Wish You A Merry Chocmas

Or should that be Merry Chocmassive Children with Big Fat Bellies, No Life and a Penchant for Chocolate that will haunt them until they die?

My beef? I want an advent calendar for Phoebe. I don't want it to have chocolate in it.

She's not even 10 months old. She's never tasted chocolate and I want it to stay that way for a fair few months yet. Besides which, I just don't like the idea of chocolate advent calendars, at least until she's a few years older. Eating chocolate every day is not a habit I wish to instill in my child and I want her to appreciate the magic of Christmas, not to expect some kind of gift every day.

The wonder of an advent calendar is the mystery of what is behind the door, not the knowledge that it'll be a piece of chocolate but you don't know what shape it is. Who cares what shape it is? Just give me the goddam chocolate. And then once the chocolate is gone you're left with an ugly bit of moulded plastic which obscures the picture behind it.

Don't get me wrong, when I was a kid I loved chocolate advent calendars, especially (English) Cadbury's. My sister and I would usually share one and we'd take it in turns to eat the chocolate. I seem to remember that I was even days (because my birthday is on 2nd) and she was odd days. But I hated the look of the calendar once the chocolate was gone. It seemed so used up and desolate and yes, ugly. We usually had a card one too and that was always much prettier. Auntie Betty always gave me an advent calendar for my birthday. A non-chocolate one. But we didn't have chocolate advent calendars until we were around 8 or 10 years old. They probably didn't do them before then.

So why am I whinging about this? Why not just go and get Phoebe a non-chocolate advent calendar and be done with it? Well, I tried and you would not believe how difficult, if not impossible that is, at least where I live. I know we're a little way into December but I've asked around a bit and I get the impression that the lack of such calendars is not a result of them having sold out. One shopkeeper told me that the years that he gets them in no one wants to buy them so he didn't bother this year and another assistant told me that he'd never even seen one.

What is the world coming to? Hallmark, what are you playing at?

Why do we complain about childhood obesity and then let Christmas become just one big eat-fest? For a month!! Bring back the magic of Christmas, I say. Be gone, materialism; be gone buying expensive, useless presents for the sake of it; be gone the expectation of a chocolate every day in December. Bring back the wonder of choosing the perfect gift, no matter how small or inexpensive; of wrapping it up and making it look beautiful; of placing it under the tree and admiring it in the weeks leading up to Christmas; of watching the excitement, surprise and appreciation on the face of the recipient on Christmas day; of opening the advent calendar to see what lies behind today's door and to watch it morph from one big picture into a mosaic of tiny little ones.

UK friends and family take note; if non-chocolate advent calendars still exist over there (and I sincerely hope they do or there is no promise for the future of our fat society), please send one over for us next year. Many thanks... oh and happy December!