I guess it’s time to start opening the little doors on your advent calendar, if you have one. If you don’t, I recommend the Cosmic Genome Advent Calendar. It’s free, and every day gives you a new little science clip. Today’s is about a weird little experiment you can do in a dimly lit room with a mirror…which I can’t try yet, because I’m on my way to work, and everything in the science building is brightly lit with Science and Technology and the Fluorescent Glow of the Future.
Later, when I get home…
Are these “advent calendars” a regional thing? I’ve never actually seen one of these things here in Oklahoma.
“Are these “advent calendars” a regional thing? I’ve never actually seen one of these things here in Oklahoma.”
You might need to be a kid to notice them. They aren’t at all common in California but we all remember them from our childhoods.
All the grocery stores here on Vancouver Island have cheap advent calendars (or nondenominational countdown calendars) with little bits of chocolate in them. Some of the liquor stores have much more expensive advent calendars with bottles of beer in them.
Lego sells advent calendars with one mini-fig or small thing to build each day in December.
My family did this sort of thing with a home-made long felt strip and pieces of wool, resulting in a banner with candies tied to it for each day rather than doors being opened. Re-usable for each year, we just needed new candies.
Invented (stepwise) in the early 19th century in Germany.
Dark Jaguar,
Since you live in Oklahoma, ask someone who has commissary privileges at Tinker AFB to bring you one.
Because so many AF members have been stationed in Germany, the military bases sold advent calendars with chocolates in them for the kids long before I ever saw them in stores off-base. I started buying them for my kids when we were stationed at Tinker in the mid-eighties.
My daughter’s husband is now stationed in Germany, and she’s been telling me about all of the cool advent calendars that her son had to choose from over there. They are lots of fun for kids to count down to Christmas, even when they are used in a totally secular way.