How to make your own advent calendar

There’s no single right way to make a DIY advent calendar. It depends on how much time you have, where the other person lives, and whether you’d rather craft or write. You can also mix all three.

• Filled: 24 little boxes, pouches, or envelopes with small things inside. The classic. It takes supplies and a free evening.
• Crafted: a calendar made of paper, photos, and words, where making it is the gift. Fewer supplies, more ideas.
• Digital: 24 doors with photos, voice messages, and coupons, sent as a link. It takes ten minutes and works across state lines and oceans.

If you want to design and fill an advent calendar yourself, start with the person, not the container: What makes them happy, what do they miss, what makes them laugh? After that, the format almost picks itself.

An original advent calendar doesn’t have to be a big project. Often a good idea and some paper are enough. The easiest homemade advent calendars use what’s already in the junk drawer: envelopes, clothespins, twine, a marker.

• Envelopes clipped to a string with clothespins, each with a number and a note for the day.
• A mason jar with 24 folded slips, each one a memory or a small mission.
• A paper chain with 24 links and a line written on each one. Tear one off every morning.
• A mini muffin tin with 24 cups and a numbered paper circle taped over each one.
• Matchboxes stacked into a tiny dresser, with a little note in every drawer.
• A notebook with 24 pages, each one saying something you like about the person.

It doesn’t need to look perfect. A crooked number and a handwritten line feel more personal than any glossy box.

Photos are the easiest filler because you already have them: on your phone, in old albums, in the family group chat. A DIY photo advent calendar only needs a selection and a few words. Pick 24 pictures that tell a story, like your year in pictures or moments from your time together.

To keep it from looking like a photo album, add one sentence per picture: when it was, what happened right after, why you picked it. If you don’t feel like printing 24 photos, put them in a digital advent calendar, where a voice message next to each one brings it to life.

A personalized advent calendar usually means one with a name printed on the front. That’s nice, but a calendar only gets personal through what’s inside. A custom lid doesn’t change the fact that behind the doors is the same thing everyone else gets.

Personal means memories only the two of you share. An inside story, the song from your first road trip, the voice of her best friend. Fill it like that and you don’t need a name on the box, because every door was made for exactly one person anyway.

A digital advent calendar is still homemade, just without the scissors. You decide what goes behind every door, and you can keep working on it whenever you like. Here’s how it works, step by step:

• Set up the calendar: the name of the person it’s for, who it’s from, and a look.
• Fill the doors: photos, voice messages, videos, a song, or a few words, and more than one thing behind a door if you like.
• Invite others: one link for the family group chat, and everyone picks an open door.
• Give it: as a link by text or email, or as a card with a QR code.

There’s no app to download and no account to make, for you or for anyone who joins. From December 1, one door opens each day. If you give it later, nothing is lost: the doors of the days that have passed open right away. The calendar stays online for three months from the first door, then it’s deleted.

A DIY advent calendar is the most fun when a lot of people pitched in. Ask siblings, friends, or coworkers if they’ll take a door. Mom takes December 6, the best friend the 13th, Grandpa records something for Christmas Eve. Everyone brings their own idea, and you end up with a calendar more varied than you could ever make alone.

Digitally it’s especially easy: everyone gets the same link, picks an open door, and fills it without overwriting anyone else’s. The person you’re making it for finds out who’s behind each door only when they open it.