h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

These were a tradition in my family when we were young. My sister still makes them every year, always a new and inventive design. Over the years, she has come up with some extremely elaborate devices, mainly made from cardboard, involving revolving discs, boxes, random-looking window arrangements that reveal pictures when strips are pulled in different ways...

How nice of you to write about these Christmas calendars. I have made a lot of them myself for my children, because they help to pass the months of December and avoid the everyday question: How many days to Christmas?
I love seeing them hanging on windows with the light shining through the already opened doors of the days. Anyhow, I do not think there are many nations who are so sentimental about Christmas as the Germans. Once, long ago, I walked through town on Christmas Eve and I met nobody. Behind closed windows all I could see were lighted candles (real candles at that time) on Christmas trees. It was a beautiful experience, but also a very lonely one. I felt excluded, the only person on earth, until I reached my parents' home.