the advent of advent calendars

I never claimed to understand advent calendars. It's a world I stay out of. That is, until a few days ago. For his bday, C got a Trader Joe's gift card, and he used it one day while I was at work. I wrote down a coupla things that I wanted that are only available at TJ's, like white pomegranate tea and Penguin mints. The story goes that they were out of both of these things, but a good possibility is that they were forgotten until it was too late. So to make up for it, C bought me a cardboard and chocolate advent calendar that cost $1.

I arrived home and found it sitting on my computer chair. It was then moved to where all things go, the floor, where it was semi-forgotten about. This means that while I was aware of its existence and knew that I was to hang it up on December first, I did nothing about it. This also meant that when I opened the blinds for the cat, the calendar was in the sun. And then the cat sat on it.

So I came home from work yesterday to find it once again on my computer chair. It was brought to my attention that I needed to hang it up, and not only because it was December 1. So I decided to play the advent calendar game and punch out a cardboard hole to get my train-shaped chocolate. As I was eating the mediocre at best chocolate (yeah I know it cost a dollar, but let me tell you , there was no Godiva or Ghirardelli in there) I noticed the cardboard squares were numbered. But you could only see some of the numbers because of bad graphic designers. On closer inspection, the box I had opened was 15, whereas I had assumed it was 1 because it was in the upper left corner. No, 1 was in the middle somewhere. On even closer inspection, I found that the numbers were in absolutely no order and since I couldn't even see half of them, I was thoroughly confused.

This morning I wanted my yucky chocolate, so I looked for box 2. It was in the upper right corner. I punched it out and got my chocolate, which was not shaped like an airplane, but a circle with a plane inscribed on it. So the numbers follow no logical order, and the chocolates aren't even consistent.

Again, this is my first experience with an advent calendar, so I don't know what they are for or how they work. My powerful robot brain thought they were to count down the days to xmas, but how can one count down days when they are just scattered random boxes with randomly shaped bad chocolates inside? Are you familiar with the old robot saying "does not compute?"

I don't get it.