The Advent calendar

An Advent calendar counts down the days to Christmas: behind each little door, flap or pocket waits one day of December, until the last one opens on Christmas Eve. The custom began in 19th century Germany, and its printed form has roots in Munich, where some of the earliest Advent calendars were published around 1900, including those of the publisher Gerhard Lang. This guide traces the history of the Advent calendar, the shapes it has taken, the traditions around it in Bavaria today and the dates that matter for the 2026 season.

Advent calendar history: from homemade to printed

The first Advent calendars were made at home. According to the Protestant portal evangelisch.de, simple homemade versions already existed in 19th century Germany, mostly in Protestant households. Some families marked the days on a candle that burned down a little each evening, others put up a new picture every day. A 2001 article in The Christian Science Monitor describes another early method: Protestant families drew chalk lines on a door or wall, one for each December day until Christmas Eve. The Advent wreath, on which the Hamburg pastor Johann Hinrich Wichern lit one candle for each day from the first Sunday of Advent in 1839, is also counted among the forerunners; our page on the Advent wreath tells that story.

Printed calendars arrived around 1900, and the trail leads straight to Munich. The German Christmas Museum in Rothenburg ob der Tauber names a calendar called "St. Nikolaus der Weihnachtsmann" as the oldest known printed Advent calendar; a utility model registration was granted for it to Carl Straub of Munich in 1900. A "Christmas clock for children" followed in 1902. The Protestant news agency epd reported these findings in 2025.

Gerhard Lang and the Munich Advent calendar

A name closely tied to the Advent calendar is Gerhard Lang (1881 to 1974). As evangelisch.de tells it, he was the son of a pastor and his wife, and as a boy he received a painted piece of cardboard from his mother with 24 cookies sewn onto it. He was allowed to eat one a day, and the memory later inspired his printed calendars.

Working as a publisher in Munich, with the firm Reichhold & Lang, he regularly released new illustrated calendars "from 1904/1908," as epd puts it. An older evangelisch.de article dates his first printed calendar to 1904 and describes it as two sheets: one with pictures to cut out, the other with spaces to paste them in, one per day. Museum pieces show how inventive the Munich firm became. The German Fairy Tale and Weser Legend Museum in Bad Oeynhausen holds an Advent clock from about 1920, designed by the artist Richard Ernst Kepler for Reichhold & Lang. A dial at the bottom edge sets the numbers 6 to 24, and each number brings up a new picture in a cloud above a snowy house.

Who printed the first calendar with doors is disputed. The Austrian Catholic news agency Kathpress credits Lang with a calendar with little doors in 1908. The Neuenburg Castle Museum in Saxony-Anhalt gives that title instead to "Christkindleins Haus" (the Christ Child's house), which Dora Baum illustrated for Reichhold & Lang in 1920, according to the museum. It is a St. Nicholas calendar: it starts on December 6 and has 18 small shuttered windows plus one large door for Christmas Day. The Neuenburg museum and the German Christmas Museum also credit Lang with the chocolate-filled calendar, which the Christmas Museum dates to 1926, according to epd.

Types of Advent calendars

• Picture calendars: the paper calendar with 24 doors that open onto small images.
• Advent clocks: a dial instead of doors, like the Kepler calendar from about 1920.
• Chocolate calendars: according to evangelisch.de, mass production started in the 1950s and made the chocolate-filled calendar the norm.
• Homemade calendars: little bags or boxes filled at home. A 2025 YouGov survey of about 2,000 people in Germany, reported by epd, found that 54 percent planned to buy a ready-made calendar and 8 percent to make their own.
• Living Advent calendars: a neighborhood custom described below.

History left its mark on the pictures, too. Religious motifs dominated for a long time, but according to evangelisch.de the Nazi state imposed references to the winter solstice and Germanic legends. After World War II, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, Richard Sellmer started making Advent calendars in his living room in 1946, and his calendars soon found buyers in the United States.

Christmas market Advent calendars

Christmas markets also turn up as a motif. The Museum of European Cultures in Berlin, which keeps an extensive collection of Advent calendars, owns one from around 2000 by the Munich publisher Sellier that shows the Munich Christkindlmarkt. Another in the same collection, from about 1980, shows the Nuremberg Christmas market and carries 24 short descriptions of the places behind its doors on the back, with an English translation. If you would like to see the real thing, our guide to the Munich Christmas market has the 2026 dates, and German Christmas markets covers other cities.

Advent calendar traditions in Bavaria today

A newer custom turns a whole neighborhood into a calendar. Since the late 1990s, epd reports, the "living Advent calendar" has spread across Germany: parishes, local groups or private households each take one day of Advent and open a front yard or courtyard, where people sing, tell stories and share cookies and hot drinks. Munich's Lehel district has an ecumenical Advent calendar, and the Bavarian National Museum calls its stop a "Living Advent Calendar." In 2026 the museum welcomes visitors to its garden on Thursday, December 17, from 6:30 to 7 p.m. for a short spiritual reflection with its director general; no museum ticket is needed.

In Munich the word also stands for charity. The daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung runs an aid campaign called the "SZ-Adventskalender für gute Werke" (SZ Advent calendar for good works) that helps people in need in the Munich region; in January 2024 the paper said readers had given more than 200 million euros in total.

The Bavarian beer Advent calendar

Advent calendars for adults sometimes hide drinks behind the doors. If you buy one that promises Bavarian beer, note that "Bayerisches Bier" (Bavarian beer) has been a protected geographical indication in the European Union since 2001, registered at the request of the German government. German consumer advocates, as reported by epd, also advise reading the ingredient list on calendars that contain alcohol, because the front does not always make it obvious. Beer calendars are for adults of legal drinking age; enjoy them in moderation. To learn what you might find inside, see our guide to German beer types.

When to start your Advent calendar in 2026

Most calendars have 24 doors, from December 1 to December 24. In 2026, December 1 is a Tuesday, while the first Sunday of Advent falls two days earlier, on November 29. Some early calendars started later: the Munich St. Nicholas calendar and the Kepler Advent clock both begin on the 6th; St. Nicholas Day on December 6 is a Sunday in 2026. For the wider picture of the season, read German Christmas traditions, or the German version of this page, Adventskalender.