Courtney Cahoon had her nails painted for Halloween when she wanted to get into the Christmas spirit by shopping for her favorite seasonal item: an Advent calendar. She grabbed a few from the stores before ripping one that cost her $98 from Anthropologie.
“I’ve been waiting a whole year for this,” she exclaimed at the beginning of the Oct. 20 video announcing the third year of her “Advent Series.” It’s a content series in which she opens one Advent calendar every day in the run-up to Christmas Day and rates it for her 1.5 million TikTok followers.
These are not the Advent calendars of decades past, which consisted of small numbered doors hiding a toy or a piece of chocolate that had to be opened on each of the 24 days leading up to Christmas. These advent calendars are made by some of the biggest beauty, fashion and lifestyle brands today and feature luxury products such as skin care, makeup, jewelry and other collectibles. For example, Swarovski’s costs $1,200 for mostly crystal ornaments, while Kiehl’s “Open for Adventure” set includes 24 travel-sized skin care products for $125.
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While traditional chocolate calendars have long offered families the pleasure of one sweet treat a day, lifestyle influencers like Cahoon are filming themselves going through an entire calendar in one go. “People like it because it’s the opposite of what you should do with an Advent calendar,” she tells Yahoo Life about the videos. So far, her most popular Advent calendar unboxing has been viewed 3.6 million times this year. “They sure are a lot of fun.”
Why Advent Calendars?
Cahoon grew up loving Advent calendars and receiving one every year with chocolates inside. Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, tells Yahoo Life that the influencer is one of many who finds the gift format nostalgic.
Advent calendars have religious roots and were originally used to prepare people for Christmas by displaying a devotional image or Bible verse for each day of the Advent season (the four weeks leading up to the holiday). It wasn’t until the 1970s that chocolate company Cadbury began producing their own versions, giving consumers something new (and sweet) to look forward to.
“It’s an interesting tradition: this idea of a micro-treat,” Lightman says. “It’s something that a lot of people would send to their grandchildren [or] their children to get them into the Christmas spirit.”
But over time, the holiday season has become highly commercialized, Lightman says, as have traditions like the Advent calendar. Nowadays tradition is more about ‘getting’ [people] ready for huge amounts of gifts” associated with Christmas, he says.
Fortunately for brands, the concept continues to captivate people, according to Reilly Newman, founder and brand strategist of Motif Brands, where he has become an expert in consumer behavior.
“It’s all about the surprise and the anticipation,” Newman tells Yahoo Life of the calendar format in particular. “There’s that drooling over what it’s going to be, what’s in it and trying to overcome that. It is dopamine that drives you to fill a gap of information,” which can only be done by revealing what each day has to offer.
He adds: “Brands benefit from that.”
What’s the point of revealing them?
The desire to know what’s behind every door of an Advent calendar is natural. However, the way people approach that curiosity is different now because of social media.
“[Advent calendars] It’s meant to be something you can enjoy over time. Now we’re narrowing it down to a four-minute clip where someone unpacks it and reveals all these things,” says Newman. Content creators who can’t wait to open these gifts give viewers the chance to see for themselves what’s behind each door. “That dopamine craving is really fulfilled by these short videos [that are] revealing the whole thing immediately, versus the self-control of opening one door a day.
According to Lightman, this phenomenon is not unique to Advent calendars. “Unboxing has been kind of a viral, thematic series across all social platforms for a few years now,” he says. But the fact that there are so many revelations in one gift increases the excitement. “We have no attention span and want to see everything.”
Some TikTok users have said that this trend spoils the surprise for anyone who wants to buy a certain Advent calendar to experience the excitement in real life. But Lightman says viewers often have other intentions. For example, some may not want to buy the calendars at all, while others may want to watch these TIkTok videos to see if a calendar is worth buying.
“There’s a lot of looking and judging on whether it’s worth the price they’re paying,” Lightman says. “Just like a consumer will look at different reviews online [of a product].”
Who benefits from this?
Whether someone comes across an unboxing of Cahoon’s Advent Calendar or purchases and opens one themselves, the brand creates an experience. That, according to Newman, is the most important goal of marketing today.
“Brands are really desperate for the experience economy and how to expand that experience,” he says. And whether the initial excitement of an Advent calendar is experienced all at once or over a 24-day period, the result is 24 products with which a consumer consistently interacts with the brand.
“People want to be consistent,” says Newman. “So with the Advent calendar you can get into this person’s life and not only participate in a traditional kind of ritual as they do that every year, but also it starts to form that habit where someone even thinks about that brand. on a daily basis.”
Cahoon’s tradition of unwrapping Advent calendars has also allowed her to cultivate community.
“There is such an excitement around the holidays [gift-giving],” she says. “People are constantly looking for something that way. And so I feel like they know that when they come here, there’s going to be reviews of this and they know what to look for.
