Sunday, December 19, 2010

What's Wrong with Advent Calendars?

No, I'm not getting on board with the "war against Christmas" fake controversy ginned up by the Fox political apparatchiks.

But consider this: On a trip to Walgreen's today to pick up some more wrapping paper, I noticed some advent calendars. You remember them: You open a little window or box on the calendar for each day leading up to Christmas. I have one on the wall outside my office. Open up each day and you get a little piece of chocolate.

But mixed in with the advent calendars and even outnumbering them at Walgreens were a bunch of Disney-themed "Count-down to Christmas Calendars" which were, of course, advent calendars, just sans anything Christmasy and just promoting some Disney movie property. Forget about the fact that you don't need to hyphenate most of the words in the calendar's title. I suspect this renaming of the calendar was probably done not out of an anti-religious bias, as some would claim. It was probably done out of misguided sensitivity to religious folks, so that Disney wasn't in the business of selling The Little Mermaid in a religious calendar setting.

Still, buy your kid a real advent calendar, with real chocolate, and not some overpriced Disney movie advertisement. They'll thank you some day.

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