A Singaporean influencer, Grace Glazee, starts a Tiktok video by saying, \u201cI accidentally spent $11,000 on an Advent calendar!\u201d She then unpacks the entire contents of Dior’s new luxury gift set "La Malle des R\u00eaves Holiday 2025". The influencer knows exactly what she is doing, as she was baited, and now millions of people have watched her rummage through the 24 drawers of this \u201cdream chest of dreams.\u201d The calendar is filled with various Dior perfumes, a snow globe, a designer scarf, and paper ornaments.<\/p>\n
The luxury set is a far cry from the humble beginnings of the Advent calendar. The word \u201cAdvent\u201d comes from the Latin word \u201cadventus,\u201d which means \u201carrival\u201d or \u201carrival.\u201d It is a time of anticipation for Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus. Many Advent customs marking this countdown were the result of a major change initiated by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. Until the 16th century, children received their Christmas presents on St. Nicholas Day, December 6th. But for Luther, this amounted to veneration of saints, which is why he decided that gifts should be given on Christmas Eve instead.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the 20th century, the first printed versions of a calendar with illustrations or Bible verses appeared. With the rise of consumer culture after World War II, chocolate companies realized that Advent calendars were the perfect format for everyday snacks. In the 2000s, beauty and skin care brands also began releasing their calendars. The packaged sets provided an ideal marketing tool to give customers the opportunity to discover their products through 24 mini-samples. From there, alcohol and beverage manufacturers jumped in, along with pretty much any brand that could fit 24 items in a box.<\/p>\n
There are countless videos like Glazee’s for all box sets from the world’s leading designer brands. In fact, a whole genre of \u201cAdvent calendar unboxing\u201d emerged in the 2010s via social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube and then TikTok. In 2021, the viral potential of luxury Advent calendar videos reached new heights. This year, Chanel released its first-ever Advent calendar, celebrating the 100th anniversary of its iconic perfume Chanel No. 5. The most viral take on the Chanel offering comes from a TikToker whose unboxing revealed that the set’s contents clearly weren’t worth the $825 retail price.<\/p>\n
But were the outraged viewers actually the target group of such a luxury calendar? The company may not care if some people believe their products are too expensive or don’t live up to their luxury promises. For designer brand influencers who are now unboxing a different luxury advent calendar every day of December and sharing their \u201c$11,000 accidents,\u201d this is a winning strategy for getting noticed. Would such sets ever have been designed without their video content arousing the desire for ever more extravagance? The luxury Advent calendar has become a status symbol, and the unboxing videos are a way to showcase one’s wealth and style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction to the Luxury Advent Calendar A Singaporean influencer, Grace Glazee, starts a Tiktok video by saying, \u201cI accidentally spent $11,000 on an Advent calendar!\u201d She then unpacks the entire contents of Dior’s new luxury gift set "La Malle des R\u00eaves Holiday 2025". The influencer knows exactly what she is doing, as she was baited,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[18176,15718,19488,2382,19493,9436,1672,7907,3815,3293,5910,443,4413,691,19487,727,19491,19489,4963,3257,19490,19492,19486,221,1250,494,10727,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-27667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lifestyle","8":"tag-advent","9":"tag-advent-calendar","10":"tag-adventus-ceremony","11":"tag-beauty","12":"tag-chanel-no-5","13":"tag-christmas","14":"tag-christmas-eve","15":"tag-consumerism","16":"tag-cosmetics","17":"tag-dior","18":"tag-diors","19":"tag-instagram","20":"tag-internet-celebrity","21":"tag-jewellery","22":"tag-latin-church","23":"tag-marketing","24":"tag-martin-luther","25":"tag-nativity-of-jesus","26":"tag-perfume","27":"tag-product-business","28":"tag-reformation","29":"tag-saint-nicholas-day","30":"tag-snow-globe","31":"tag-social-media","32":"tag-status-symbol","33":"tag-tiktok","34":"tag-veneration","35":"tag-youtube"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27669,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27667\/revisions\/27669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}