Advent is not the time from December 1st until Christmas, it starts on whatever days the fourth Sunday before Christmas happens to fall on that year. This way, there are exactly four Sundays in advent.

If Christmas itself should fall on a Sunday one year, it doubles as the fourth Sunday of Advent, i.e., then the first of Advent will be only three weeks earlier.

(I never could wrap my head around all this. I had enough problems with Easter events, where the math makes a detour through a Lunar calendar.)

EDIT: And my memory of the Tradition is wrong too, it's supposed to be 24 - as confirmed by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710618, and corroborated the two "Paw Patrol" themed Advent Calendars I just found still stashed in my home office.

j/k ;-)

> (first day of spring)

It's actually the March equinox. "Spring" is true only in the northern hemisphere. What's more it's the ecclesiastical equinox, not the astronomical equinox, whose date actually varies depending on the year.

Never mind that all this is descriptive of dating in countries that grew up with Western Christianity. Countries where Eastern traditions dominate often date it differently.

All good will to you both = )

There is no time for actual advent or winter calmness in general.

We can only hope. The Christmas song containment fields are weakening as we speak.

In Eastern Christianity, the Nativity Fast starts on a fixed day: November 15.

You're overly attached to the meaning of Advent, but you aren't even aware of the meaning. It doesn't mean exactly 25. This year Advent Sunday is November 30th.

And the creator of Advent of Code can do whatever they want with it, despite the name. They've put an immense amount of effort into this for so long - if that had been me, I would have been incredibly disheartened to see people saying "the whole point is just 25".

It’s safe to say this ship has sailed.

This largely depends on who you're asking? I don't know anyone who wouldn't consider 24 the course correct number of Advent, simply because that's the common number here (we celebrate Christmas on the 24th). So 12 makes perfectly sense, just do every second day.

There are also many groups who don't start on the 1st of December, but on the first Sunday of Advent. And probably many others.

24 doors on the Lego calendars too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_wreath

The 50th star is awarded for having the other 49 stars and then basically clicking OK I think. If you've been diligently solving them in order, it means you effectively get two stars for your final 49th puzzle of the year on Christmas Day, which makes sense because then the puzzles are very hard and a "normal" puzzle wouldn't leave much time for other Christmas Day activities. But if you're the sort of person who often gives up on a day and never comes back you may never have seen this because you never got to 49 stars.

You're not quite right that the Christmas Day puzzle is trivial - it's the first half of a maybe week 1 type difficulty puzzle, but there just isn't a second half:

Here's the puzzle text for last year's Xmas Day (if you are logged in you can play, but even without it will explain the puzzle it just won't give you an input to test your solution):

https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/25

the word you're looking for is pedant

In the spirit of pedantry, I added even more minor detail!

You don’t seem to hate it that much?