We’ve lost our way with advent calendars. How social media has contributed to a seasonal unboxing trend.

Courtney Cahoon still had her nails painted for Halloween when she set out to get in the Christmas spirit with a shopping spree for her favorite seasonal item: an advent calendar. She picked up a couple from stores before tearing into one that cost her $98 from Anthropologie.

“I’ve waited an entire year for this,” she exclaimed at the beginning of the Oct. 20 video announcing the third year of her “Advent Series.” It’s a content series in which she opens one advent calendar a day leading up to Christmas Day and reviews it for her 1.5 million TikTok followers.

These aren’t the advent calendars of decades past, which were made up of little numbered doors that hid a toy or a piece of chocolate to be opened on each of the 24 days leading up to Christmas. These advent calendars are being made by some of the biggest beauty, fashion and lifestyle brands today, and include luxury products like skincare, makeup, jewelry and other collectibles. Swarovski’s, for example, costs $1,200 for mostly crystal ornaments, while Kiehl’s “Open for Advent-ure” set includes 24 travel-size skin care products for $125.

While the traditional chocolate calendars have long provided families with the joy of a sweet treat per day, lifestyle influencers like Cahoon film themselves going through an entire calendar in one sitting. “People like it because it’s the polar opposite of what you’re supposed to do with an advent calendar,” she tells Yahoo Life of the videos. So far, her most popular advent calendar unboxing this year has 3.6 million views. “They’re definitely really fun.”

Why advent calendars?

Cahoon grew up loving advent calendars and received one each year with chocolates inside. Ari Lightman, professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, tells Yahoo Life that the influencer is among many who find the gifting format nostalgic.

Advent calendars have religious roots and were originally used to prepare people for Christmas by providing a devotional image or Bible verse for each day of the advent season (the four weeks leading up to the holiday). It wasn’t until the 1970s that the chocolate company Cadbury began to produce their own versions, giving consumers something new (and sugary) to look forward to.

“It's an interesting tradition — this idea of a micro treat,” says Lightman. “It’s something that a lot of folks would send to their grandchildren [or] their children to get them into the spirit of Christmas.”

But over time, the holiday season has become highly commercialized, Lightman says, as have traditions like the advent calendar. These days, the tradition is more about “getting [people] ready for massive levels of gift giving” associated with Christmas, he says.

Luckily for brands, the concept continues to excite people, according to Reilly Newman, founder and brand strategist of Motif Brands, where he’s become an expert in consumer behavior.

“It’s all about the surprise and the anticipation,” Newman tells Yahoo Life of the calendar format in particular. “There’s that salivating over what’s it gonna be, what’s inside and trying to overcome that. It’s dopamine driving you to fill a gap of information,” which can only be done by revealing what each day offers.

He adds: “Brands are taking advantage of that.”

What’s the point of unveiling them?

The desire to know what’s behind each door of an advent calendar is natural. However, the way in which people approach that curiosity is different now because of social media.

“[Advent calendars] are supposed to be something that's savored over time. Now, we're just reducing it down to a four-minute clip where someone's unboxing it and revealing all these things,” says Newman. Content creators who aren’t waiting to open these gifts give viewers the chance to see for themselves what's behind each little door. “That urge from the dopamine is being really fulfilled through these short videos [that are] unveiling the entire thing immediately, versus the self-control of opening one door a day.”

That phenomenon isn’t unique to advent calendars, according to Lightman. “Unboxing has been sort of this viral, thematic string across all social platforms for a few years now,” he says. But the fact that there are so many reveals within the one gift heightens the excitement. “We have no attention span and want to see it all.”

Some TikTok users have said that this trend spoils the surprise for anyone hoping to purchase a particular advent calendar to experience the excitement in real life. But Lightman says that viewers often have different intentions. For example, some aren’t looking to buy the calendars at all, while others might want to watch these TIkTok videos to see if a calendar is worth buying.

“There's a lot of review and assessment associated with whether it is worth the price that they're paying,” Lightman says. “Just like a consumer would go online to look at a variety of reviews [of a product].”

Who is benefiting from this?

Whether somebody is coming across one of Cahoon’s advent calendar unboxings or purchasing and opening a calendar themselves, the brand is creating an experience. That’s the main goal of marketing today, according to Newman.

“Brands are very desperate to figure out the experience economy and how to extend that experience,” he says. And whether the initial excitement of an advent calendar is experienced in one sitting or over a 24-day period, the result is 24 products that will have a consumer consistently interacting with the brand.

“Humans are about being consistent,” says Newman. “So with the advent calendar, you're able to get in this person's life and partake not only in a traditional kind of ritual if they do it every year, but also it's starting to form that habit where someone’s even just thinking about that brand on a daily basis.”

Cahoon’s tradition of advent calendar unboxings has also allowed her to cultivate community.

“There's such an excitement around the holidays with [gift-giving],” she says. “People are constantly searching for something that way. And so I feel like they know that coming here, there will be reviews of these and they know what to look for.”