Here's to Imperfection: A Week Two Advent Round-Up for People Who Have Already Eaten Half the Chocolate

We are deep in the belly of Advent now. Week two. The season of waiting, reflection, and — if your household is anything like the average American home in December — the season of having already consumed fourteen days' worth of chocolate in the first four days because the doors on your advent calendar were very easy to peel open and no one was watching.

This is a judgment-free zone. Mostly. We do have some notes.

The cultural machinery of the holiday season has, as it does every year, fully committed to the bit. Ads are everywhere. Countdowns are stacked inside other countdowns. There are advent calendars for skincare, for whiskey, for dog treats, for cheese, and somehow for luxury watches that cost more than a semester of community college. The original concept — twenty-four small doors, a little chocolate, a little anticipation — has been scaled, monetized, and influencer-gifted into a format that now requires a spreadsheet to manage.

So let's take stock. Week two. Here's how we're all doing.

The Advent Calendar Has Become an Unhinged Consumer Product and We Are Fine With This

At some point between 2015 and now, the advent calendar stopped being a cardboard rectangle with a nativity scene on the front and became the single most important retail format of Q4. Beauty brands release advent calendars in October — October — that sell out before Halloween. You have to join waitlists. You have to set calendar reminders. You have to compete with bots.

This year's offerings include a $400 skincare advent calendar that contains approximately $800 worth of product if you value it at full retail price, which the brand very much wants you to do. There's a charcuterie advent calendar. There's a hot sauce one. There's a LEGO one that takes three hours per door and is technically a hobby commitment disguised as a holiday tradition.

And yet. And yet! We are opening them. We are filming ourselves opening them. We are posting the reveals. We are, in our imperfect and slightly unhinged way, finding genuine delight in a small cardboard door. That part — the small door, the tiny surprise — still works. It's the $400 price tag and the October launch date and the waitlist that have gotten a little out of hand.

Week Two Is When the Aesthetic Starts to Slip

Week one of Advent has a certain energy. You light the candles. You arrange the greenery. You put on a playlist that is legally required to include "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Everything smells like cinnamon and possibility.

Week two is when the pine needles start appearing in locations that make no geographical sense. The wreath has developed a lean. One of the candles burned unevenly and now looks like it's having an existential crisis. The holiday card you meant to send is still sitting on the counter, unsigned, next to a permission slip from October and three lip balms you definitely own but cannot explain.

This is the real Advent experience. Not the curated flatlay. Not the coordinated pajama set. The actual lived reality of attempting to be festive while also being a person who has jobs and laundry and a refrigerator that needs cleaning out.

The internet, of course, is still running the curated version. Your feed is full of people whose homes look like a Restoration Hardware showroom was gently dusted with snow. Their advent calendars are arranged in a grid. Their candles burn symmetrically. Their children are wearing matching linen.

Your advent calendar has three doors open that weren't supposed to be opened yet, one door that you can't find because the calendar fell behind the couch, and a suspicious chocolate smear on the back that you are choosing not to investigate.

Here's to you.

The Round-Up: What Is Actually Happening in Week Two

Let's do a quick cultural temperature check on where things stand as we barrel through the second week of December:

The shopping situation is, as ever, a masterpiece of engineered urgency. "Last chance for standard shipping" emails began arriving approximately eleven minutes after Cyber Monday ended. Every retailer in America is currently in your inbox with a subject line that contains either a snowflake emoji, the phrase "don't miss out," or both. The deals are real. The deadlines are also real. The psychological pressure is doing its absolute best.

The party circuit is back in full swing, which means you have approximately three social obligations this week that all landed on the same Thursday because December is a scheduling catastrophe. You RSVP'd yes to all of them with the best intentions. You will attend one and a half. You will feel guilty about the half.

The "simple holiday" resolution you made in January — fewer gifts, more presence, less stuff — has encountered reality. It turns out your family has opinions. It turns out your kids have a list. It turns out you saw something at the store that was perfect for someone and you bought it and now you have more stuff than you planned. The resolution survives in spirit. The Amazon order history tells a different story.

The food situation has already escalated. You made a batch of cookies "to get ahead of things." The cookies are gone. You made another batch. Those are also mostly gone. You are now considering a third batch and calling it "practice." This is correct. This is the right call.

Imperfection Is the Point, Actually

Here is the thing that the advent calendar industry, the holiday content machine, and the coordinated-pajama-set-on-a-staircase photo complex does not want you to internalize: the imperfection is where the actual holiday lives.

The lopsided wreath. The card that goes out late with a handwritten apology inside. The batch of cookies that got a little too brown on the bottom so you eat them yourself and call it quality control. The kid who opened four doors on the first day because the concept of waiting is developmentally unreasonable and honestly fair enough.

Week two of Advent is not a highlight reel. It is a Tuesday with candles on it. It is a Thursday with too many parties. It is a Saturday with a to-do list that keeps getting longer and a chocolate-smeared calendar that is doing its best.

We are all doing our best. The season is excessive and commercial and overwhelming and also, somehow, still capable of producing moments that feel genuinely warm. Both things are true. They have always been true.

Open the next door. Eat the chocolate. Light the slightly uneven candle.

Week three will be here before you've had time to feel ready for it, which is, when you think about it, the most Advent thing of all.