Twenty-four boxes: who printed the first Advent calendar?

By Isla Quinn

Chalk. Straw. A picture a night. Before there was cardboard, there were children counting.

Before the printing press

The German Christmas museum’s page on Advent calendars says the earliest evidence is a children’s book of 1851 by Elise Averdieck. In it a new picture is added to the wallpaper each evening, and twenty-four pictures mean Christmas. The museum adds that chalk marks on doors and straws in a nativity crib also counted down the days. Wikipedia’s English article agrees on the broad picture: German Lutherans used the calendar in the early nineteenth century, and early printed versions had Bible verses behind small cardboard doors.

The Richard Sellmer publishing house, a producer, says early forms came from Protestant households, with twenty-four pictures on the wall in December or twenty-four chalk marks wiped away day by day. It also names 1851 as the earliest known handmade calendar.

Who printed the first one?

Here the sources scatter. This is what each says.

The German Christmas museum: a calendar called “St. Nicholas the Santa Claus”, protected by a utility model of 1900 for Carl Straub in Munich, was the first printed calendar. It also lists a “Christmas Clock for Children” in 1902.
Sellmer, a producer: the Evangelical Bookshop in Hamburg published “probably” the first printed calendar in 1902. It cites the Lower Austrian State Museum for 1903, mentions a Christmas calendar given away with a Stuttgart newspaper in 1904, and dates Gerhard Lang’s first printed calendar to 1908.
German Wikipedia’s article on Gerhard Lang: the idea came to him in 1903.

We do not choose between them. Our reading: “first” depends on what you count. A picture sheet, a gift with a newspaper and a calendar with doors are three different objects, and each source may be answering a different question.

The Munich publisher

German Wikipedia says Lang was born in Maulbronn in 1881 and died in Munich in 1974. He settled in Munich in 1902 after a bookseller’s apprenticeship, and became a partner in F. Reichhold’s lithographic art institute. His mother, it says, had made a homemade Advent calendar by sewing Wibele, a meringue pastry from the Hohenlohe region, onto cardboard.

The first calendar he conceived had no windows. It had two sheets: one printed with twenty-four small poems in boxes, written by Lang, and one with twenty-four matching pictures to cut out and glue on. The article says Richard Ernst Kepler drew it. It was sold as the “Münchener Weihnachtskalender – Im Lande des Christkinds”, and later became a commercial success. The German Christmas museum says Lang published variants from 1904 or 1908. Sellmer says the first Lang calendar was called the “Munich Christmas Calendar” and had no windows.

Doors, houses and chocolate

German Wikipedia says Lang went on to make a “Christkindlshaus” to fill with chocolate and, from 1920, calendars with doors, Christmas clocks, Advent trees with pluggable angels, and an Advent house with windows lit by a candle. Sellmer says calendars with little doors that open appeared around 1920. The museum credits Lang with the first calendar with chocolate in 1926. English Wikipedia mentions “Lang’s idea” only in passing, with no date, and says that tear-off calendars were largely replaced by fold-out doors by around 1950.

Why December first

English Wikipedia says Advent begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which falls between 27 November and 3 December, and that many reusable calendars start simply on 1 December. The museum says early versions sometimes started on 6 December, St Nicholas Day, or on the first Sunday. Twenty-four doors on 1 to 24 December is a convention, not a rule.

Dates in order

1851: the Averdieck children’s book, according to the German Christmas museum and Sellmer.
1900: Straub’s utility model, according to the museum.
1902: Hamburg claim, according to Sellmer; Christmas clock, according to the museum.
1903: Lang conceives the idea, according to German Wikipedia; Lower Austrian State Museum date, as cited by Sellmer.
1904: Stuttgart newspaper gift, according to Sellmer; start of Lang variants, according to the museum.
1908: Lang’s first printed calendar, according to Sellmer; other start for the Lang variants, according to the museum.
Around 1920: doors that open, according to Sellmer and German Wikipedia.
1926: first chocolate calendar, according to the museum.

Side by side

Four sources, at least six first dates. The two sources that name Lang agree that his early calendars had no doors and were Munich products. They disagree on 1903 versus 1908. Our reading: Lang’s sheet was the one that stuck, and that is why his name keeps surfacing, even where an earlier printed item exists. That is an inference, and none of the sources say it.

What kind of sources these are

A museum’s online page; Wikipedia in English and German, both open to edits; and a publisher that sells Advent calendars and tells its own history. We treat Sellmer as promotional. We read no archive and no Lang family source.

Questions a buyer would ask

Is the calendar printed, or is it a reusable box? Do the doors open, or is it a cut-and-paste sheet? What is behind the doors? We make no claim about any brand.

What we left out

We left out the later twentieth-century decades of the trade, company histories and sales figures, and the question of religious content, which varies by calendar and which the sources only touch.

Quick answers

Who is called the inventor of the Advent calendar? According to the German Christmas museum and Sellmer, a producer, Gerhard Lang of Munich is credited. Both also name earlier printed items.

Did the first printed calendar have doors? No. German Wikipedia and Sellmer both say Lang’s first calendar had no windows. Doors came around 1920, Sellmer says.

When does an Advent calendar start? English Wikipedia says Advent begins between 27 November and 3 December, and that many calendars simply start on 1 December.

Roam first. Shop later.

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