Is there any better feeling than starting the day with a tiny bit of chocolate? For 11 months of the year you wouldn't dare do such a thing, but for some reason it feels perfectly normal in December.
Opening up a window full of chocolate every day is a much-loved tradition in the run up to Christmas.
And it's even developed away from chocolate, with cheese, wine and beauty advent calendars becoming the norm.
Nothing beats the timeless classic, but there is a dark truth we are all ignoring. Is it actually worth it?
It's hard to tell exactly how much chocolate you get in your advent calendar, so we've opened up all the doors to find out exactly what's inside.
Cadbury Dairy Milk - £1.50
Let's start with the most classic of all the advent calendars.
Cadbury's offering is always a fan favourite - 24 little pieces of chocolate.
For some reason, their advent calendar chocolate tastes so much better than their usual bars. What Christmas magic are they putting inside? I don't know but I want more of it.
And herein lies the problem with Cadbury’s advent calendar, there simply isn't enough of it. I could easily demolish all 24 tiny pieces in one sitting.
But you have to admit, at just £1.50 it is incredible value for money.
Cadburys Heroes - £5
What you see is what you get with this one.
There’s 24 chocolates inside the Heroes Advent calendar - just one little packet for each day.
It’s nice to get a wide range of different chocolate bars.
For me personally, it was four Fudges, three Twirls, three Dairy Milks, three Dairy Milk Caramels, three, Creme Egg Twisteds, two Wispas, two Eclairs, two Crunchie Bites and one Double Decker.
The windows were either rectangular or long and thin, so it was easy to tell where you were getting a Twirl or a Fudge, but the rest was up in the air.
You know what you’re getting with Heroes chocolate, reliable, tasty treats, but I felt it could have had more mystery.
And some shoppers have complained about the position of the first window, claiming they couldn’t find December 1st because the colour of the font matches the background.
Considering you can buy a tub of Heroes for the same price and get more than double the amount of chocolate - it doesn’t feel like a great deal.
Lindt Teddy - £10
This is the big daddy. An absolute monster of an advent calendar.
Lindt chocolate is usually a special treat but for December you get the privilege of enjoying it once a day.
It costs a whopping £10 for the 3D bear, which stands out from the crowd when compared to the regular rectangular ones.
For that price you expect a lot of chocolate and this doesn’t disappoint.
You get eight milk chocolate Snowdrops with a creamy double milk filling and four Lindor milk chocolate truffles.
Now we get onto the really good stuff, six Lindt teddies, four gold reindeers and four Santas.
And there's extra special treats on December 1st and 24th - as you get a massive 40g Santa or teddy.
It's very expensive, but this calendar is sensational, there’s a lot of variation and I do think the price is justified.
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