Where has this been all my life?

When I was a kid, we had the lame paper advent calendar every year. My brothers, sister and I took turns opening windows to count down to Christmas. Behind each door was a picture of something Christmasey. And the holier advent calendars had scriptures to go along with them. I think we may have actually used the same calendar each year. No daily chocolate calendar for us, just all natural paper-based fun. Sigh.



Now that I think about it, that may have been best with 4 kids to fight over a single piece of chocolate each day. Or get 4 chocolate advent calendars. No, they wouldn't have made it to Christmas. I'd have eaten all of mine by my birthday on the 13th.

But thanks to Pinterest, you can easily find some very crafty, complicated designs that you will be convinced you need to do, will buy all the materials for $60, and then never get around to making, only to be back at the chocolate calendars.

But Lego has upped the ante:



I think I would have gotten much more into the tradition with something like this. No, not something like this; EXACTLY this.

Festive? Check.

Darth Maul in Santa wear? Check.

Another way for Lego to exploit a religious holiday in the name of commercialism and make money? Absolutely.

I've forgotten all about chocolate advent calendars now. This holy 3-way marriage between Christmas, Legos, Star Wars and a countdown can only signal that the Mayans were wrong--there is hope for the future of mankind. And I've always thought that the light saber battle at the end of Jedi looked nice and festive.