The season of Advent can begin on any day between the 27th November and the 3rd December (inclusive). This doesn’t suit commercial types, however, so the traditional shop-bought advent calendar compromises by beginning on the 1st December. If you haven’t got yours yet, it’s not too late. Or there are many things online that have advent calendars. This German advent calendar has a poem for each day:
while this Advent Calendar is about how Christmas is celebrated around the world:
http://projectbritain.com/Xmas/calendar/
The point of the advent calendar is, of course, to teach children to wait by helping them take one day at a time, but the chocolate advent calendars are so nice, aren’t they? We usually get a Divine advent calendar, but nowadays the children share the chocolates, and we just read the story.