Gerhard’s Mum

On day four of creation God said, “Let great lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them mark off the seasons, days, and years” (Genesis 2:14). And so began the idea of marking time. Interestingly enough, counting down the days until Christmas, or the season of advent, is a relatively modern invention. In fact, there is no mention of a celebration of Christmas in the Bible at all. Nor Easter for the matter. Nonetheless, there certainly is nothing wrong with anticipating the coming of the Christ child.     

The tradition of advent calendars didn’t start until the 19th century in Germany. Though the question of who the original inventor is still contested. One strong contender for the title of ‘the inventor of the advent calendar’ is Gerhard Lang, or more specifically, Gerhard Lang’s mum. The other contender was an Austrian Protestant who, in 1902, sold calendars from his bookshop.

Anyway, Gerhard’s enterprising mum attached twenty-four cookies onto a square of cardboard for the young Gerhard to enjoy in the days leading up to the festive season. When he was all grown up, Gerhard remembered his mum’s inspired idea and went on to manufacture his very own advent calendars in 1908, with a business partner. He didn’t bother with the cookies. Keeping cookies fresh without modern preservatives was futile. Instead, Gerhard introduced the concept of concealing little pictures hidden behind little closed doors. Unfortunately, the business came to an end in 1930, but the concept had caught on. A few years after his company went into liquidation, the Sankt Johannis Printing Company (among others) started producing advent calendars but, in this instance, with a distinctive twist on the original concept. No longer were there just twenty-four little doors concealing little pictures (and the vague possibility of chocolate) hello twenty-four little doors concealing biblical verse. This version was short-lived with the arrival of the Nazis who banned advent calendars in the 1940s, preferring to call them ‘pre-Christmas calendars’ and replaced the biblical verses with swastikas and exploding tanks.

After the war, the advent calendar had a renaissance and, for the first time in its history, began to appear outside of Germany, largely thanks to Richard Sellmer of Stuttgart (his company still produces more than a million calendars a year in twenty-five countries). In 1946, Sellmer exported the tradition of printing advent calendars depicting snowy, winter scenes; motifs that have come to define the aesthetics of Christmas.

Whether you have chocolate or seasonal pictures in your advent calendar, tomorrow starts the countdown. There are only twenty-four days until as the angel said, “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior – yes, the Messiah, the Lord – has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:10-12). Let us sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come!” I pray that earth receives her king and that every heart prepares Him room.

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