An Advent calendar does not need chocolate to make the wait for Christmas Eve exciting. Swapping the treat for a small daily challenge turns the countdown into memories: a card for a neighbour, a blanket fort in the living room, an evening walk to see the lights.
The family variant offers 24 challenges that take about half an hour with children and need nothing you would have to buy. The adult variant has 16, roughly the number of working days in December before the holidays, so a team or a group of friends can join in without eating into work time.
Every result shows exactly what to do, so nobody has to invent the activity on the spot.
How to use it
- Choose the variant: family with children, or adults and colleagues.
- Every morning, spin the wheel once and announce the challenge of the day.
- If a challenge you have already done comes up, or the weather rules it out, spin again.
- Tick off each completed challenge on a sheet stuck to the fridge or in the team chat: the full list makes a lovely recap on the 24th.
All the options
- Coffee on me
- Bring a coffee or tea to someone you rarely talk to and ask what they are working on at the moment.
- Specific thank-you
- Message someone who helped you this year and name exactly what they did. Copy their manager in if it makes sense.
- Year-end clear-out
- Fifteen minutes to empty a drawer, a shared folder or your downloads folder. Anything untouched for a year gets binned or archived.
- Lunch with another team
- Invite someone from a different department to lunch. Come back knowing one thing about their job you had no idea about.
- Shared winter playlist
- Everyone adds one track to a shared playlist without saying which. Play it together on Friday and guess who picked what.
- Lunchtime walk
- Ten minutes walking outside at lunch, phone tucked away. Even better as a group.
- Five-minute tip
- Show the team a shortcut, setting or method that saves you time, in five minutes. One tip only, demonstrated live.
- Guess the baby photo
- Volunteers send a childhood photo to one organiser, who shows them at the end of the day. The team guesses who is who.
- Charity collection
- Start or join a collection of toiletries, books or toys for a local charity. Everyone drops off at least one item.
- Family recipe swap
- Everyone adds a festive dish from their family to a shared document. The finished collection goes out to all before the holidays.
- Year-in-review quiz
- Write five questions about the team’s highlights of the year and ask them at the coffee break. No prizes, just bragging rights.
- Handwritten card
- Write a card by hand to a client, a partner or a former colleague. Three personal lines are enough.
- Call someone
- Take ten minutes to phone someone you have not spoken to in ages. No text message: an actual call.
- Book of the year
- Everyone recommends the best book they read this year in a single sentence. The list becomes the holiday reading pile.
- Stairs-only day
- No lift today. Add up the floors the team climbs and announce the total at the end of the day.
- Desk decoration
- Make a decoration from scrap paper (a star, a snowflake, a folded tree) and put it on your desk or in the shared space.
Frequently asked questions
What challenges can I put in an Advent calendar for kids?
Short activities that cost nothing and fit on a school night: paper crafts, a kind gesture for a neighbour, a screen-free game, a short walk. Save the longer ones (baking, building a fort) for weekends.
When does Advent start?
Shop-bought calendars run from 1 to 24 December. Liturgical Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which falls between 27 November and 3 December depending on the year.
How do I run an Advent challenge calendar at work?
Ask one person to spin the wheel every morning and post the challenge in the team channel. Keep each challenge under fifteen minutes and always optional, and wrap up on the last working day with a list of everything the team completed.
What if today’s challenge cannot be done?
Spin again, or move the challenge to the weekend. The idea is one activity per day; the order does not matter.