Guide to Advent Calendar with links

It's over and done, but for anyone who wants the full list, here it is

1. Annunciation - Mary has her pregnancy foretold by Angel Gabriel - large scene ( First Sunday)
2. Joseph is warned by an angel not to divorce Mary - large scene
3. Visitation - Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist - large scene
4.  Census document - Mary and Joseph must travel to Bethlehem to participate in the census - small scene
5. A suitcase represents preparation for the journey - small scene
6. Crossed keys represents things you take on a journey, and the keys to heaven of St Peter, head of the first church - small scene
7. Mary and Joseph begin their journey - large scene

8. John the Baptist and and Isaiah predict Jesus coming "make straight the way of the Lord" - large scene - large scene (Second Sunday)
9. Parable of the pearl without price (Matthew 13:45-46) - small scene
10. Priscilla and Aquila, key figures in the early church- large scene
11. The whale that swallowed the prophet Jonah - small scene
12. Noah's Ark - large scene
13. Deborah - prophet and leader in the old testament - large scene
14. Joseph and Mary stop at an oasis on their journey - large scene


15. Wise men watch the star in the east - large scene (Third Sunday)
16. Adam and Eve - large scene
17.  Miracle of the loaves and fishes - small scene
18. Abraham and Sarah - descendants numbered like the stars - large scene
19. Moses as a baby in the reeds - small scene
20. Vine - small scene
21.  No room at the inn - large scene

22. Angels visit the shepherds to announce Jesus birth - large scene (Fourth and final Sunday)
23. Gifts of the magi - gold frankincense and myrrh - small scene
24. Star above the place where Jesus was born - small scene
Nativity scene - individual parts make up a picture
25. Donkey
26. Ox
27. Joseph
28. Mary
29. Jesus

Parts 24 to 29? How long IS Christmas?

And here again we come back to the key point I wanted in my advent calendar. Advent or preparation time for Christmas is what you make of it and the choices you choose to make as a family or community, but the religious festival of preparation that is Lent is one of the Christian calendar's varying dates.
When Lent and Easter fall varies within parameters related to the moon but Lent is always the same length of time.

Christmas is always 25 December, but Advent varies in length and start date related to the day of the week on which Christmas falls. Advent is 4 Sundays before Christmas. Some of you may be old enough to remember Blue Peter making an advent wreath with 4 candles.

What does this mean? If Christmas falls on a Sunday, that's a full extra week of Advent, and the first day of Advent could be in November.  But if Christmas falls on a Monday, Advent is cut short - it's only 23 days.

So how do you manage that on an advent calendar without continually making a new one? I decided to build in some flexibility which would allow people to both follow the religious way of doing things, or to stick with the commercial generally followed way of doing things. I made each element of the final nativity scene something you could add on individually, or, if you choose you could add them on all together.

So "scene" 24 is the star in the east.
Except as you can see, it's not a star, it's a comet.
Some people have thought that the star seen by the wise men was Haley's Comet and I chose to show it like that, partly in honour of my brother who is an Astronomer and studied Comet like stars!

There's no covering leaf here because you add these elements on, much like Mary and Joseph on the donkey earlier.

So how do you know where it goes? Instead of a leaf, you've got an outline behind. and on the back of the star is the number to match up.

For the star on the light background the outline is in black.

The final "scenes" 25 to 29 are the individual parts of the nativity scene.

I wanted there to be a sense of a big reveal to this section, so I decided that there should be a much larger "door" or "flaps" that should open out to reveal the area for the nativity. Having used the road structure through the advent calendar, it made a really useful place to make the flap for the hidden place. Once I'd planned for the flaps I decided to make the hidden area dark grey - to give the feel of a dark cave or stable.

As this area is dark the outlines to add the figures to are white - with gold for the halo edging for Joseph, Mary and Jesus.

The figures are added on in order of importance, ending with the most important!
25 and 26 are the donkey and the ox that are frequently added to nativity scenes.
27 and 28 are Joseph and Mary, and 29 is Jesus.

So if you want to play it safe and only have 25 days every year, you can add on the whole scene for Christmas day every year.

BUT you have started with Advent Sundays and it varies, on a short year 24-29 are added on all together, and if it's a long year, you can add on each element one by one. And in between you can just add the last few on together varyingly.

The last feature is somewhere to hold all the loose parts - there are pockets on the back to hold the leaves and the different bits that come away. Sadly I don't have a picture.

And with that, my posts are all complete! Good news though - I've another project to catch you up on...it's a lot more nerdy.

Step back, step forward, more nativity scenes - 15, 21, 22, 23

Although I concentrated quite a few of the Christmas related scenes in the first week, I didn't want to bunch the rest of them up too much and I also wanted to kind of keep coming back to the nativity each Sunday. The problem was that some of the scenes were really part of the final nativity scene or technically just after it, when the calendar is over with.  I'd already made my calendar 25-29 days because it is based on the 4 Sundays of Advent, not the calendar month of dates.

I did think of extending the calendar even further to include these scenes but I was struggling enough with 29! I decided there would be some foreshadowing and some would be towards the end.

I decided there had to be a Christmas link to all 4 Sundays. Hence Mary and her Angel for scene 1, John's call for Jesus' coming at 8, and then further scenes at 15 and 22.

The easy one to move a little earlier was number 15 - the wise men (and women?).

Obviously they would have been studying the "star" before they started travelling so they could be moved further up the sequence, and depicted in that part of their story. I made sure that their scene would look directly at the star, which was also going to be in the picture as a later stage. Hence the telescope does not look up into the sky.

More map fabric here - I mean it's amazing stuff, and they are planning a journey so why not?

I decided I would try and make one of the figures a woman because why not?  Also stolen from a friend who made me a nativity set from clay with a female wise person.
I also deliberately decided that they would be darker looking people, as tradition says they visited Jesus from Africa, and were definitely from West of Israel.

Just before the final sequence I placed a scene for "no room at the inn" (21).

Here too as I mentioned I decided the innkeeper could be a woman.

I also made use of a map fabric scrap again, to emphasise the inn as a place for travelers and the end of the journey. I like that a negative scene also was not highlighted in a Sunday, which was less deliberate than it was pushed aside for a more interesting scene after.




For  scene 22 I decided I would just have to have the shepherds being sung to early as there was no way to make them have an earlier scene. The angels don't say "Jesus will  be born soon", they say he is born. But I decided 22 was near enough.

Similarly with 23, I decided it's not really a surprise what the gifts of the wise men were, so I just put them as near to the end as possible. They are shown as what they are or represent - gold for kingship, (frank)incense for divinity, myrrh (for his sacrificial death).

Some more randoms - 17 & 20

I guess I could have added this to the random collection post earlier but I didn't want it to go on forever. I suppose the miracle of the loaves and fishes and the image of the vine are both linked into the idea of the central part of many Christian services - communion, but they were mainly chosen as familiar images and stories that I felt an interest in recreating.

If you'll permit me to be harsh on myself, I would say scene 17 - the loaves and fishes is possibly the weakest of all my designs. It's not super interesting or clever, it simply is some loaves and fishes.

Scene 20 - the vine on the other hand is very simple but I just think it came out rather beautifully, specially as, like the pearl without price (scene 9), it was kind of made up to fill a gap sort of late in the day.

One of the things I have enjoyed about the smaller scenes was finding and using as many different leafy, planty related fabric scraps as i could find in my stashes. However, I did get to scene 20 and start worrying that I didn't have any more.


This wasn't strictly true, I did have another leafy fabric, but it had flamingos on it.

So I stitched together two bits to hide the flamingos and I had my last small leaf!