Doorways to nostalgia Luxury advent calendars tap into warm holiday memories By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 4:41 PM CST Monday, Dec. 1, 2025

The advent calendars of the ’90s were simple.

In the days leading up to Christmas, you opened a little cardboard door to reveal a single square of cheap, waxy chocolate, imprinted with the image of a poinsettia, a candle or a wrapped gift, and you worked your way to the slightly bigger square hiding behind Door 24. That one usually had Santa on it.

Those advent calendars of yore were a way for kids to “microdose Christmas,” as a viral social media post once put it.

Now, advent calendars are a way for adults to microdose luxury.

High-end beauty and skin care, bougie candles, luxury scents, whisky, caviar — if you can name it, there’s probably an advent calendar featuring it. Many of these Christmas countdowns range in price from eye-opening ($40 to $60) to eye-widening (hundreds) to eye-watering, such as the $11,000 calendar from Dior (above).

Even the calendars for kids have graduated into full-on gifts unto themselves. Lego makes one. So does Squishmallows, which retails those criminally adorable stuffies.

What’s going on with advent calendars?

“I think this proliferation of luxury advent calendars is pretty much related to nostalgia marketing,” says Kiran Pedada, associate professor in the marketing department at the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba.

Nostalgia marketing is a strategy in which companies tap into your warm and fuzzy memories to build positive associations with their brand or product.

“These advent calendars hit the sweet spot in the sense that you’re meeting the childhood memory with the purchasing power that you have right now (as an adult),” Pedada says.

During the pandemic and the subsequent economic and financial uncertainty, there emerged what gen Z dubbed “little treat culture,” in which people use small indulgences — a matcha latte, a trinket, a baked good — as a reward and/or coping mechanism.

It’s essentially the lipstick effect — the theory that economic downturns can lead to an uptick in sales of smaller luxury items, such as lipstick — rebranded for a new generation that makes videos online about it.

And what is an advent calendar if not a little treat, every day?

Advent calendars also sit in a Venn diagram with a few other trends, such as “haul” videos, in which creators show off things they’ve purchased; unboxing videos, in which creators document the process of removing a hot new product from its packaging; and blind boxes, in which items, usually of the collectible variety, are sold in sealed packages so you don’t know which one you’re getting.

It’s that combination of novelty and anticipation that advent calendars harness.

“The novelty itself is Instagrammable, actually,” Pedada says, pointing out that those daily dopamine hits don’t just come from opening the square on the calendar, they also come from sharing — and consuming — the experience online.

“It actually, all put together, creates a sort of an identity for people, right? This is where you are meeting nostalgia with identity expression. I think that’s what companies are leveraging.”

These calendars are canny on companies’ parts, Pedada says.

“That 24 days of excitement, you can actually engage these consumers for 24 days.”

Or 12 days, as in the case of the higher-end calendars.

This rise of luxe advent calendars might seem like another example of conspicuous consumption, but Pedada says it’s something else.

“I think it’s aspirational consumption. If you take conspicuous consumption or the traditional luxury goods consumption, you signal status through one big purchase, like a Ferrari or Louis Vuitton bag, right?

“These kinds of advent calendars, I think they’re very smart in the sense that they’re trying to democratize luxury through these smaller, more everyday indulgences.”

Little treats, to survive the season.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca