Who Invented the Advent Calendar? The Dates Disagree

Ask who invented the advent calendar and the answer comes in two sizes. The short one is that the sources disagree. The long one is what follows: who says which year, one claim at a time, with the date of each page. The reason a calendar has 24 doors at all, and why Advent and the count do not start on the same day, is on why advent calendars have 24 doors.

A few of the voices in this story are popular ones, and they are named as what they are: Sky HISTORY and Mental Floss are popular web articles, and the Christian Science Monitor piece is a newspaper article from 2001. The museum, church and publisher pages are cited for the dates they give.

Before print: what families did by hand

The story starts at home, before any shop sold a calendar. The Sonntagsblatt puts the start in 19th-century Protestant Germany, especially in the north and west, and states plainly that advent calendars were originally a Protestant tradition: “Adventskalender sind ursprünglich eine evangelische Tradition”. The customs it names are strokes on doors or walls that a child wiped away one a day, a new straw laid in the manger each day, and Wichern’s candle wheel.

Other sources remember it a little differently. evangelisch.de says families marked the days on a burning candle or hung a new picture on the wall each day. The Christian Science Monitor, in 2001, says Protestant families drew chalk lines to mark the days to Christmas Eve. Mental Floss says German Protestants marked days with chalk or lit candles, from the mid-19th century. Sellmer’s history page names three forms: 24 pictures hung up in December, chalk strokes wiped off daily and straw in a manger, and gives the earliest known homemade calendar as 1851. The Hopfenmuseum’s 2008 exhibition text says parents made the first ones themselves around 1850: “Erste Exemplare bastelten Väter und Mütter bereits um 1850 in Eigenregie”.

So there is no single ritual to point to: chalk, candles, pictures and straw are each attested by at least one page, and none is a firsthand record. The Monitor goes furthest and says the first cardboard calendar was made in 1851, where Sellmer says the earliest known form was homemade.

The Advent wreath has its own story and its own date: evangelisch.de says Johann Hinrich Wichern lit the first one on the first Sunday of Advent 1839 at the Rauhes Haus near Hamburg, a wooden ring “so groß wie ein Wagenrad”, as big as a wagon wheel, with a small red candle for each weekday and four white ones for the Sundays. The sources differ on the number of candles in the original, so this page gives no total.

The first printed calendar

Sources disagree The first printed advent calendar is dated 1902, 1903, 1904 or 1908, depending on the page. A children’s Christmas clock from a Hamburg bookshop is 1902 in the Sonntagsblatt, Sellmer’s history page, the Hopfenmuseum’s text and Store norske leksikon. Gerhard Lang’s 24-image “Im Lande des Christkinds”, with a sticker for each day, is 1903 in Christian Today, and Sellmer’s page gives 1903 on the authority of the Lower Austrian State Museum. Lang’s calendar is 1904 in evangelisch.de, which also calls it the first printed calendar, and a 24-scene cut-out sheet from Stuttgart is 1904 in the Hopfenmuseum’s text. Lang’s and Reichhold’s calendars with small pictures behind little doors are 1908 in Sky HISTORY, Futura-Sciences and Boursorama, while Sellmer’s page says Lang’s first printed calendar of 1908 had no windows or doors.

The 1902 sources agree on more than the year. The Sonntagsblatt names the publisher as the Evangelische Buchhandlung Friedrich Trümpler in Hamburg and the product as a “Weihnachtsuhr für Kinder”; Sellmer calls it “probably” the first printed advent calendar; Store norske leksikon describes a clock whose hand was turned 24 times. Sky HISTORY is the odd one out on place: it says an Austrian Protestant sold calendars from his bookshop in 1902. For 1904, Sellmer’s page and Stripes Europe both say the Stuttgart newspaper “Neues Tagblatt” gave its readers a Christmas calendar that year.

Which year this page goes with. For the earliest printed calendar, 1902 and the Hamburg clock: an article in the Sonntagsblatt, a publisher’s history, a museum’s exhibition text and a national reference work agree on the year and the city. For Lang’s first picture sheet, 1903 or 1904: the sources split, so the page gives both and does not choose. And 1908 marks the start of the Reichhold & Lang range, a commercial line, not the invention itself.

Gerhard Lang and Reichhold & Lang

Lang is the name that keeps coming up. Sellmer’s page gives his years as 1881 to 1974 and says he was born in Maulbronn, a pastor’s son. In the story it tells, his mother drew 24 boxes on cardboard and sewed a “Wibele”, a small biscuit, onto each; Christian Today and Sky HISTORY tell the same story. Lang was a partner in Reichhold & Lang and used colorful cut-out drawings instead of biscuits; evangelisch.de says the firm’s calendars were considered the most beautiful and imaginative until the 1930s, and some already included chocolate. How the firm ended is told two ways: liquidation in 1930 in Sky HISTORY, and Lang giving up his business in the late 1930s, after about 30 motifs, on Sellmer’s page.

Doors to open: about 1920

Up to here, the calendars were sheets and pictures. The ones with doors to open come later, and four pages put them about 1920. The Sonntagsblatt names “Christkindleins Haus” of 1920, designed by Dora Baum, as the first with doors to open. Sellmer’s page dates doors to about 1920, Futura-Sciences says small windows to open appeared in 1920, and Christian Today says Lang added little doors in 1920, sometimes with a Bible text behind them.

Sources disagree Who added the doors, and when. The Sonntagsblatt credits Dora Baum’s design; Christian Today credits Lang himself; Sky HISTORY puts the little doors in 1908. On Bible verses behind the doors, Sellmer’s page says the St. Johannis printing house made them from the early 1920s and Sky HISTORY says from the early 1930s.

This page goes with about 1920 for the doors, since four pages agree on it and only Sky HISTORY puts the little doors in 1908. So the doors you open on a modern calendar are a 1920 idea, not the original one.

The first chocolate calendar

Sources disagree The Hopfenmuseum’s 2008 text says chocolate-filled calendars have been made since 1925. The historian Martin Johnes says a German producer released one with chocolates in 1926. In French-language articles, Futura-Sciences and Boursorama put chocolate in the calendar in 1958, Stripes Europe says late in the 1950s, and SBS says the first chocolate calendars are believed to date from the 1950s. For Cadbury in the UK, Christian Today, SBS, Johnes and Sky HISTORY give 1971.

Chocolate arrived later than the doors. This page goes with 1925 or 1926 for the first chocolate-filled calendars in Germany, because those are the dates a museum’s exhibition text and a historian of British Christmas give, and reports 1958 as the date the French-language articles give. Cadbury’s 1971 calendar is the first for the UK; Johnes adds that Cadbury moved to continuous production in 1993, that chocolate calendars made in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s did not catch on, and that through the 1980s the standard British calendar was a cardboard sheet of festive images with the nativity on the 24th, with chocolate the norm by the 1990s.

The war, and the restart in 1945 and 1946

The war changed the story. The Hopfenmuseum lists among its exhibits a National Socialist calendar called “Vorweihnachten”, and evangelisch.de says references to the winter solstice and Germanic sagas were imposed on the designs. Sky HISTORY and the Christian Science Monitor say calendars were banned in the war; the museum and church pages describe renaming and ideological content and say nothing of a ban, and this page keeps to their wording. Sellmer’s page puts the end bluntly: “Der 2. Weltkrieg setzte dem Höhenflug des Weihnachtskalenders ein jähes Ende”, the Second World War put a sudden end to the calendar’s rise. Mental Floss gives the cardboard shortage as the reason Lang’s production paused.

The restart is a Stuttgart story. Stripes Europe reports that in December 1945 the publisher Richard Sellmer “received a permit for the printing of an Advent calendar from the U.S. occupying forces”, and that in 1946 he took the calendar to a trade fair in Frankfurt to look for American buyers. Sellmer’s page says he founded the publishing house in 1945 and that its post-war calendar was “Die kleine Stadt”; Christian Today adds that some of those calendars were bought by American servicemen and sent home.

1945 or 1946. The pages split on the year. This page goes with both: licensed in December 1945, first calendar for Christmas 1946.

The United States

Stripes Europe says a photograph of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s grandchildren with an advent calendar ran in Newsweek in December 1953, and that demand rose sharply afterwards. Mental Floss says a photo of Eisenhower opening a calendar with his grandchildren ran in several national newspapers, and that he is “often credited for the proliferation of the Advent calendar tradition in the United States”. The two pages differ on the medium and on whether the President is in the photo, so this page says only what they say.

The dated table

Here is the whole argument in one place, claim by claim, with who says it and when their page was written.

In the tool The maker on this site has 24 doors, each of which opens on its date, and the calendar goes out as one link by WhatsApp, email or social media. Doors that open are the idea the sources above date to about 1920; the tool adds the link and the date.

Put it in a calendar

A calendar about the history needs only a few facts a day; a family one asks for a little more. For a person far away, start from the template for a friend abroad, or start from an empty one: Create your calendar, pick a background, and put door 1 behind its first date.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who invented the advent calendar?

No single person. The sources cited here trace it to Protestant homes in 19th-century Germany, name a Hamburg bookshop’s Christmas clock in 1902 as probably the first printed calendar, and name Gerhard Lang, a Munich publisher, for the picture calendars of 1903, 1904 and 1908.

When was the first advent calendar made?

The earliest homemade form is dated 1851 by Sellmer and around 1850 by the Hopfenmuseum. The first printed calendar is dated 1902, 1903, 1904 or 1908, depending on the page.

What was the original purpose of an advent calendar?

A countdown to Christmas, like the wreath, according to Austria’s tourist board. The Sonntagsblatt describes the early customs as ways for Protestant families to mark the days.

Are advent calendars biblical?

The sources cited here do not describe a Bible text as the origin of the calendar. They trace it to a Protestant German custom of the 19th century and report Bible verses behind the doors from the early 1920s or the early 1930s.

Are advent calendars a Catholic thing?

The Sonntagsblatt says the calendar was originally a Protestant tradition. The sources cited here do not describe a Catholic origin.

Who invented the chocolate advent calendar?

No page names one person. A German museum dates chocolate-filled calendars to 1925 and a historian to 1926; Cadbury’s first chocolate calendar in the UK is 1971.

Who made advent calendars popular in the United States?

Sellmer took its calendar to a Frankfurt trade fair in 1946 to look for American buyers, and some were bought by American servicemen; a photograph of President Eisenhower’s grandchildren with a calendar from December 1953 is widely credited with the spread, per Stripes Europe and Mental Floss.

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