Best advent calendars for all the family 2023

Jasmine Birtles 21st Nov 2023 One Comment

Reading Time: 8 minutes

It’s amazing what brands have come up with for Advent. There are photo advent calendars, beauty advent calendars, chocolate advent calendars, toy advent calendars and more.

And the prices: they range from just a few quid to hundreds.

So we have looked at lots on the market and come up with this range of fun and festive advent calendars for you to try.

• Advent calendars for children
• Chocolate advent calendars
• Foodie advent calendars
• Plant based
• Beauty advent calendars
• Gift advent calendars

 

Advent calendars for children

Playin Choc advent calendars

Playin Choc, vegan chocolates for kids come in two calendars:

12 Day Advent Calendar – £27.50

24 Day Advent Calendar – £55.00

Each window  in the advent calendars offers a 10g mini-chocolate bar, a 3D puzzle toy made from 100% recycled board, 3 stencils to use for creative drawing, and a fun facts educational info-card.  The calendar sleeve also easily reverses into a play mat, offering hours of extra fun. 

 

Build your own slot machine advent calendar – £24.99

This clever wheeze for kids is rather good value. It includes all the elements you need to make your own slot machine. Different aspects of the machine are in the boxes for different days so by the time it comes to Christmas you have built your own slot machine that you can play with. Load your swirly glass marbles into the spring-loaded launcher and let the game begin! Made from 100% sustainable card, it’s also fully recyclable.

 

Gabby’s Dollhouse advent calendar -£24.99

 

Premier League 2023/24 Adrenalyn XL™ Countdown Calendar – £30

Young lads and lasses who are football fans will love counting down to Christmas with this official Countdown Calendar. It’s a substantial calendar that opens up to let you find 22 trading card packets. Each packet contains 6 trading cards and a QR code to unlock a digital packet. Good for children from 3 upwards.

Pokémon Holiday Calendar, £29.99srp, ages 4+

Let the holiday magic start on December 1st! With the Pokémon Holiday Calendar, discover 24 seasonal Pokémon surprises, including 16 figures and 8 accessories. Your little one will love the excitement of opening a new toy every day!

Chocolate advent calendars

Divine chocolate advent calendars – £5 each

Get milk chocolate or dark vegan chocolate in these nice, light (so cheap to post) advent calendars, Their Fairtrade advent calendars have a new chocolate heart each day, and also you money is helping improve  the lives of cocoa farmers and their families through Divine’s commitment to fight exploitation in the industry.

 

Wickedly Welsh chocolate advent calendar -£19.99

The Wickedly Welsh Chocolate Advent Calendar is less your run-of-the-mill calendar, and more a festive box of delicious chocolates that you just happen to limit yourself to one-a-day. The handmade chocolates come packaged in a beautiful Christmassy blue box and boast an array of flavours – including milk and dark, salted, orange, raspberry cream and more. The cost might initially seem high but once you’ve tasted the quality, you’ll realise every bite is worth the price. An ideal gift for the chocolate lover in your family (or you could treat yourself…why not?!)’ 

Advent Calendar

 

Lindt chocolate calendars

Everyone loves Lindt and they are brilliant as Christmas gifts. They have a selection of advent calendars including these two:

Lindt Festive Selection Advent Calendar – £15.00

Traditional Lindt festive favourites; including, a decadent assortment of Lindt Lindor truffles and Luxor chocolate, along with double chocolate snowballs with a milk chocolate filling, not forgetting the Lindt chocolate coins.

 

Lindt Gold TEDDY Advent Calendar – £20.00

This lovely gold box includes 24 delicious festive chocolate treats hidden behind the 3D Teddy.

 

Love Cocoa Truffle Calendar – £25

Countdown to Christmas one truffle at a time with this beautifully illustrated, gold-embossed, A3-size 100% plastic free calendar. It’s a really attractive-looking calendar with pictures of iconic London elements. The truffles are all handmade using ethically sourced, single origin Colombian cocoa… The chocs include Hazelnut Praline Heart, Giant Hazelnut Rocher, Salted Caramel Truffle and Spiced Gingerbread Truffle. And not forgetting a surprise Love Cocoa Mini Chocolate Bar to enjoy behind door number 24!

 

Lakeland Santa Milk Chocolate Advent Countdown Slims – £12.99

This is one of my favourites as it is light, attractive and involves a delicious, simple chocolate every day. It’s a traditional picture of Santa Claus on a red background made up of 24 chocolate slims. What’s not to like?

 

 

Foodie advent calendars

Fabulous Just Spices advent calendar – £99.99

This is an amazing, huge, round spice rack made of card. It’s beautifully designed but is pretty heavy so best to get the company to send it if it’s a gift. Itr includes 24 full size mixes, seasonings and toppings,plus the brilliant Just Spices Cookbook.  The cookbook is a gift in itself with over 100 recipes. The spices include Oatmeal Spice to warm up breakfast and Chicken Curry Seasoning to jazz up Friday evening dinner, and of course the very popular Avocado Topping among other cool spice mixes.  The whole calendar is really worth over £139. A big present in itself.

 

Maison Bremond Provence Calendar – £60

 

Cheese Advent Calendar – £8

 

If you have more of a savoury tooth then this is a fantastic alternative to chocolate. Containing 24 individual cheeses, the award-winning advent calendar features 11 mouthwatering varieties from award-winning Somerset-based cheese specialists, Ilchester Cheese Company.

Founded in the heart of cheese-making West Country, Illchester Cheese is known for their innovative flavours and high-quality locally-sourced ingredients.

Fantastically priced and available in Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Lidl and Ocado from 10 November.

Plant Based

Chococo Christmas Countdown Chocolates – £27.50

One of the first, if not the first, artisan chocolate company in the UK to offer fine chocolates for Advent back in 2005, these boxes, containing 25 delicious and award-winning flavoured chocolates. They really are exceptional and like no advent calendar I have ever seen.

With flavours such as Bottoms Up (a dark chocolate gem filled with a Marc de Champagne infused creamy oat m!lk chocolate), Chai Spice (oat m!lk blended with cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and clove), moreish Fruity Cluster, Panela Panache (a single origin dark chocolate truffle with Colombian panela sugar) and Oat M!lk Honeycombe Gem (crunchy honeycombe pieces in an oat m!lk gem).

This dairy allergic woman hasn’t tried flavours such as these in years.

H!P Oat Milk Chocolate Advent Calendar – £10/120g

H!P’s 2023 Advent Calendar is filled with 24 squares of oat m!lk chocolate in four different flavours: Creamy Original (classic and smooth), Salted Caramel (a salty sweet sensation), Gingerbread (the official taste of Christmas) and Orange (zesty and creamy). Vegan or not, this advent calendar will make every day of December delicious.

 

Joe & Seph’s Advent Calendars – £30 each

If you like popcorn then you will love Joe and Seph’s Advent Calendars. They have three 24-day ones including ‘Find Joe’, ‘Vegan’ and ‘Classic 24. They’re nice big boxes but quite light as they are mainly popcorn, so that helps for postage! The highly-decorated pictures include doors behind which are small packets of the company’s signature popcorn in all kinds of flavours including candy cane, brandy butter, strawberry caramel and vanilla cheesecake. Great for children as well as adults.

Love Raw’s M:LK CHOC ADVENT CALENDAR. £6.99

Love Raw have some of the best vegan milk chocolate on the market and this really is delcious. For an incredible price and lovely box this will appeal to all of your milk dodging friends and family.

Beauty Advent Calendars

Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory x Revolution 12 Days Advent Calendar -£40.00

i thought this was a chocolate advent calendar when it arrived! It really looks like a nice box of chocolates with a sturdy box around what you assume is going to be a delicious set of chocs. But no! It’s beauty. It includes some great cosmetics including Blueberry powder blusher, Chocolate Cream Bronzer, Candy cane eyeliner and gold shimmer shadow pot. A really fun and useful present for the make-up fan in your life!

 

Gift Advent Calendars

Personalised chocolate advent calendars –

Who wouldn’t want a chocolate advent calendar with a photo of their children, their dog or their favourite holiday destination on the front? It’s a great idea and this year at least two companies are doing it.

Firstly Vistaprint is offering this service. They have lots of templates available on site or you can chose to personalise it with your favourite photos. It is available in different sizes, A4 and A5, different formats (horizontal and vertical) and with classic milk chocolate or vegan chocolates. Prices are £15.12-16.90.

Then CREWE offers an extra large personalised advent calendar that you can personalise with your own photograph too. The calendar is 48 x 36 x 3.5 cm in Landscape or Portrait and you can either add in your own photo or use one of their templates. It’s filled with filled with 27 fairtrade Tony’s Chocolonely chocolates in 10 different varieties. This one costs £37.99.

 

 

Lakeland Festive Joy Musical Christmas Tree Advent Calendar – £79.99

They describe this as an ‘heirloom piece’ and it’s certainly the sort of thing that you can bring out each December, putting the Christmas charms in the numbered boxes so that you can all have fun taking them out one by one and hanging them on the wooden tree. It is a quality, long-lasting product. The sort of thing that you might send to relatives for them to use year-in, year-out