I propose an advent calendar that lasts the whole year long. Admittedly, it’s on these, the colder, sicker days that we need a little treat the most. A tincy wincy treat to get us through the morning and allow us to claw our eyelids open and feast upon the splendour of another day, a country polluted and bereaved, and covered with a fine dusting of whichever variant has chosen to join us this week. But then January comes and we are still in need, and February, and March, and we’re still in need by spring, in need of a special little treat to propel us through the longer days. It is our responsibility to stay cheerful and positive, and we do this by medicating with one very small Milky Bar after breakfast.
At some point in the last decade came a universal acknowledgment that advent calendars were wasted on children who, unlike us, still had faith that sweet things were due to them. The chocolates were replaced by fingers of gin, or “craft accessories”, or whisper-sized beauty products and miniature perfumes, for women like me who find relief by temporarily extinguishing our ugliness and stench.
In our house I cobbled together one for my daughter using last year’s calendar and some Hanukkah coins, to keep her on her toes. As I carefully sealed each window I considered what else I would hide in an adult version, a celebration of a year half-lived. A lateral flow test, of course, and a delicately folded mask, and a new Britney song, and a little NFT, and a sealed vial of the shepherd’s pie that killed a woman, and a fake arm, useful for pranky anti-vaxxers, and an argument about Adele, and a voucher for one of those obscene supermarket delivery companies that promises to bring you cereal within half an hour, the existence of which signals Earth’s early death rattle.
On TikTok this week, a series of videos of a disgruntled customer opening her $825 Chanel advent calendar went viral. It was the first time Chanel had sold an advent calendar and it was designed in the shape of a perfume bottle. It joined similar luxury beauty brands, like Dior and Saint Laurent, in offering an opportunity for fans to buy a Christmas present for themselves, no doubt fully aware of the bookish horrors from in-laws to come. The most expensive this year is Tiffany’s at $150,000, a 4ft-tall white oak cabinet with a reproduction of a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting on the front and 24 gifts inside. Typically, these luxury calendars will be marketed as a bargain – if we were to add up the virtual value of the products inside they might exceed the (still staggering) price of the calendar, but truly, this was a fact only offered by those who had already purchased one to their bewildered partners, widely understood to be a cover story. However, nobody likes to feel they’re having the piss taken, and it was this concern that drove numbers on Elise Harmon’s TikTok page, and then comments on Chanel’s.
Over a series of videos (viewed now over 50m times), Harmon used her exquisite manicure to open the calendar’s doors, revealing sample-sized beauty products, a keychain, a sort of string friendship bracelet, and fabulously, a dustbag. A little cloth pouch, the kind something better comes in. At one point, I think it’s when she opens the wrapped stickers, Harmon turns off the camera, so disappointed is she. In that moment all of capitalism glitches, before quickly righting itself. But still, the story had been told, and the internet was in agreement that the calendar appeared to have been assembled by somebody frantically rooting through the office bin muttering “shit shit shit”.
And you know what? Fine. On our heads be it. If we do insist on remaining in thrall to the mythology of luxury brands, whose very name elevates a piece of string from trash to jewellery and allows two zeroes to be added to the price, then what else should we expect than exactly that? A time comes when we must decide whether we will stubbornly turn away from the glamorous logoed sirens, singing to us from the rocks, to live our lives hand-knitted and righteous, or whether we will, occasionally, give in to our lust. A lust for soft things made shiny in light, worn by movie stars on a panel about violence. A lust for something stamped with taste. And if we do insist on giving in to our puppyish desire for treats and rewards, the terribly simple way our ears prick up when a certain word is said gently, then isn’t this exactly what we deserve? It is our fault entirely for investing so much in so little, in maintaining such empty hope.
Besides, what lies behind the window of an advent calendar is not the important thing. The joy is in the brief death-defying seconds it takes to crack it open. Here is the delight, here is the prize – the knowledge that simply by getting out of bed, today you have won.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
