>The Advent calendar, which is now indispensable during the Advent season, only originated at the beginning of the 20th century.

The actual origins can be traced back to the 19th century. The first forms of the Advent calendar come from the Protestant environment.
In religious families, 24 pictures were gradually hung on the wall in December. Simple, but no less effective, was another variant: 24 chalk lines painted on the wall or door, from which the children were allowed to wipe one away each day (so-called tally calendar).
Or straw was placed in a manger, for each day until Christmas Eve.

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>Other forms include the Christmas clock, or an Advent candle that could be burned down each day until the next marking. The earliest form of a homemade Advent calendar dates back to 1851. Those who wanted to order an Advent calendar had to wait a bit longer: In 1902, the Evangelical Bookstore in Hamburg published what is likely the first printed Advent calendar: A Christmas clock for children, which is absolutely comparable in handling to the one that was published in 1922 by the St. Johannis printing house (Dominik Wunderlin, lic.phil Switzerland).

In the year 1904, a Christmas calendar was included as a gift with the "Neuen Tagblatt Stuttgart." However, the Lower Austrian State Museum states that the year 1903 is the year of origin of the printed Advent calendar.