See some of the weirdest Advent calendars you can buy

Luxury Advent calendars now include fine china, jewelry, and rare whisky

Advent calendars have shifted sharply upmarket, with retailers offering versions filled with bone china ornaments, gold jewelry, premium beauty products and even rare whisky. Some cost hundreds or thousands of pounds, including a £10,000 whisky calendar and Dior's £570 perfume-filled set.

Advent calendars have become a major seasonal driver for brands

Companies now treat Advent calendars as key holiday products, expanding production as demand surges across categories. Retail data shows beauty and self-care calendars consistently rank among the most popular, as some brands report selling out yearly, and retailers order months in advance.

The first chocolate Advent calendar appeared in 1958

Chocolate Advent calendars began in 1958, when German companies first paired the traditional countdown with small pieces of chocolate behind each door. The idea spread slowly at first, but eventually became one of the most popular Advent calendar formats worldwide.

‘Compound chocolate’ lacks cocoa butter, making Advent calendar candy taste different

One of the fun aspects of the contemporary Advent calendar, making them irresistible to children, are the numerous little chocolates often tucked inside little paper flaps, marking each day leading to Christmas. That chocolate tastes different because it’s likely made from inexpensive fats like palm kernel oil, not cocoa butter.

German printer Richard Sellmer revived Advent calendars after World War II

Advent calendar production resumed in 1946, when German printer Richard Sellmer began issuing nostalgic winter-town designs that became classics, later exporting them to the United States. His company still operates today, producing more than 140 varieties.

Nazi Germany replaced Advent calendars with depictions of family life under Nazi rule

During World War II, the Nazi regime banned printed Advent calendars because of religious messaging. Officials instead produced state-approved versions featuring swastikas, tanks, and Nazi symbols.

See how Advent traditions vary widely around the world

Advent is celebrated in distinct ways across countries—Chinese Christians hang colorful lanterns, Mexicans reenact Las Posadas processions, Germans light weekly wreath candles, and Hungarians attend dawn matins—reflecting how local cultures shape the season’s preparation.

A German town transforms its entire city hall into a massive Advent calendar

Gengenbach turns its 18th-century town hall into a 24-window Advent calendar attracting up to 220,000 visitors each December. Each night reveals new art, reviving winter tourism in the town.

The world's different calendars, explained

The calendar we use to mark the days, months, and year can feel set in stone, but the history of calendars shows these organization systems can and do change. Parse the fascinating, complex details of the Gregorian, Julian, Chinese, Hebrew, and many more calendars in this comprehensive, well-executed explainer video.

The Black Friday Archive collects Black Friday ads from the past 25 years

The archive features advertisements from notable retailers such as Bath & Body Works, Gap, and The Home Depot, among others. These ads span from the years 2000 to 2024, in addition to some from early holiday sales at Macy’s in 1963.

The oddest shots captured on Google Street View

Ever wondered what you could see on Google Street View if you looked hard enough? With this delightful site, you can now explore the weird and wonderful things captured since the service debuted in 2007.

Thirty weird facts about Christmas trees

From its fascinating origin to how yours is grown today, these incredible Christmas tree facts will add a little bit more wonder to your holiday season.

One odd Macy’s location is basically a museum

Here’s a list of things you wouldn’t expect to see at your average Macy’s store: a 19th-century French painting, a former midcentury children’s barbershop, nautical portholes, and the list goes on. Shoppers can find all those things and more in one unique Macy’s store in Pasadena, California.

McDonald's releases a new adult Happy Meal

Some McDonald's restaurants in Ohio began a nostalgic campaign in late 2023, reviving chicken nugget-style doll toys famous in adult-themed Happy Meals over a quarter-century before. The company collaborated with artist Kerwin Frost to create the toys. Read more and see photos here.

Many artisan cheesemakers avoid modern methods

While much of the cheese found at the supermarket has been made in a factory, there are still plenty of artisan cheesemakers who do things the old-fashioned way. There is also a burgeoning vegan cheese market, which has quickly evolved from plasticky neon-orange shreds to Camembert-style soft cheeses made using traditional techniques.

A sample of quirky medieval era-book titles

The medieval book publishing industry wasn't quite so robust as our modern era's, but the mystical and satirical tomes coming out at that time still needed a name. Peruse this list of some of the quirkier of those titles, which reflects the era's literalness, theological interest, and downright silliness.

The best Valentine's Day-themed horror movies

It may seem like an odd combination—a holiday centered on love and a film genre dedicated to fright—but the hyperspecific subgenre thrives on the apparent juxtaposition, along with some campy send-ups of an overly commercialized holiday.

The origins of Iceland's child-eating Yule Cat legend

Iceland is a cold place, and wool production has long been a key means of surviving the climate's severity. For those Icelanders who failed to get new Christmas clothing before the holiday, their lurked a vicious, hungry cat to consume them. The centuries-old folklore is a fascinating story of social control through the tales we tell. For a dose of Christmas fear, read this wild article.

How to make a Hanukkah feast

You might think you know latkes and kugel, but this collection of Hanukkah-appropriate recipes from Food & Wine takes things to a whole new level. Shake things up at your next holiday table with cinnamon-cardamom sufganiyot, rugelach with a tahini glaze, or brisket with caramelized fennel.

The 'playing card' and 'blueberry' taxes are among the strangest around the world

In Canada, companies making children’s breakfast cereals are granted a tax exemption if their cereal boxes contain free toys. While the exemption is limited to toys that are not “beer, liquor, or wine,” the cereal tax is far from the world's most eccentric tax.

The best New Year’s Eve drops

There’s more out there than the Times Square ball drop. This list ranks the best of the rest, including the Great Pinecone Drop in Arizona, the Lebanon Bologna Drop in Pennsylvania, and the Pickle Drop in North Carolina.

SantaCon went from an anarchist protest to a rowdy bar crawl

Now known mainly as a costumed, Christmas-themed bar crawl, SantaCon began in San Francisco in 1994 as an anarchist protest against Christmas overconsumption inspired by a Danish event in 1974. It spread to Portland and Seattle before the event went worldwide and lost its radical roots in the process.

The most bizarre numbers in the universe

Even for math-y types, some numbers are incomprehensible. This article dives into several kinds of numbers more complicated than even irrational numbers with endless decimals like "pi" or Euler's number: Noncomputable numbers. Read the bizarre...

Seventeen strange historical heists

High-dollar chocolate and cheese robberies to art thefts and audacious train robberies. Explore history's most peculiar stories of stealing with this list of seventeen tales of burglaries.

Animal wines: Wine bottles with pigs on the label had the lowest median prices at $23.22

If you’ve ever spent too much time staring at a shelf in a wine store, you might have noticed something similar: animals, specifically, cats, pigs, or birds on the labels. So, what do these wines have in common? This interactive tool attempts to figure out what wines that include the same animal have in common.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.