There are many to choose from, at least in Germany. Chocolate is the most common, but there are beauty calendars (I got one that was lotions and soaps), wine/gin/beer calendars, dice calendars, and so on.
hmm.. i never tought about it as a european-only thing :)
I don't think it is, but my experience prior to moving to Germany was that an Advent calendar was the calendar my mom made out of felt, where it'd have a felt piece to snap on to the tree, along with a fitting Bible verse for the day.
But I would expect that they've become more popular in the US over the last decade, because it seems like a way to sell things to people.
But it's possible that they just weren't on my radar, for whatever reason. I'd be interested in hearing if other people had experiences with the commercial calendars.
Oh, and on that thought, last year I got a Ramadan calendar. Which I hadn't seen before, and might be also new. But I've never been to, oh, Turkey or Indonesia.
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