Create your own ULTIMATE digital Advent Calendar for family/friends

It’s the ultimate Advent Calendar to gift to others–digital and loaded with custom charm to help engage your family/friends in their preparation for Christ’s coming. We’ve got two nice apps for you to choose from that will WOW them as you subtly evangelize.

Creating your own Advent app is an enjoyable way to engage your loved ones in faith reflection each day in a most personalized way. And who doesn’t love opening up a new window to see the day’s surprise? You know your friends/family best, so you can tailor the calendar to a group or to an individual (make as many calendars as you wish) and then share via social media, text or email with a link.

For my family last year, I used Pixmas Advent app and included old Christmas photos to bring up heartwarming memories. I added a reflection for the day — a little something religious to think about. For example, Day 1 is an old photo of our Advent Wreath with the text: May Christ’s light illuminate you on your journey each day of your life.

Other great ideas:

• Scripture text,
• an inspiring quote from a family member who has passed on,
• a picture of the church your family attended years ago,
• a photo of your family nativity set or a special family Christmas ornament,
• reflections on saints’ feast days during Advent
• a notice that a gift will be delivered to their door that day.

How about creating your own voucher for doing a work of mercy for them like helping them to shovel snow or create an invitation to join you at tonight’s Adoration with dessert afterwards as your treat? One day can simply be a family recipe. I have a recipe card for a family favorite in our dear grandmother’s lovely handwriting. That made a great photo.  True to the proper nature of Advent calendars, the days do not open ahead of time in the two apps featured below. No peeking allowed!

Pixmas Advent (Free) Apple  This app enables you to create an Advent calendar utilizing 24 of your own photos with ability to include text (think: caption). Because this app is stored online, you can easily send the link to social media, text or email. They don’t have to install this app. Pixmas Advent lets you customize your project for other occasions like countdown to birthdays, vacations, weddings etc. To do this, you choose the number of days you want to set up (so it’s not tied to just 24 days). The benefit to you is the ability to extended this app’s use beyond the Advent season. Think of the evangelization you could do all year long!! One caveat: this app has annoying ads at the bottom of the screen. If you send your link out before December 1, remember to tell your recipients that the first window will not open until December 1st.

Now, for the ultimate Advent Calendar…

Advent App 2019 (Free) Apple | Google Play (Currently, Google Play OS only supports receiving calendars. Only Apple IOS can create calendars). This app enables you to not only include photos but GIFs, video, text, links and voucher codes to online stores. That got the wheels in your creative mind spinning, didn’t it? The catch? The recipient needs to download this app too so they can access your calendar to them. No biggie, if you can get them to do that.

Obviously, the ability to include multi-media content adds to the enjoyment and creativity of what surely will be the most amazing calendar your friends/family will receive. Open a window and voilà! See a video of you wishing them a joyful advent. Another day could be a picture of a nativity set with a voucher code to Amazon to purchase it. Open another window and it opens up a YouTube video to a special Christmas carol meaningful to the recipient. You can include a voucher code to iTunes to purchase it too.

After creating your calendar, you will receive a code/link that you send to your recipient via email, text, social media etc. Once the link is downloaded, the recipient can open the calendar in the Advent App. You can send calendars to as many as you wish. But remember, they also need to download this app on their device and paste in the code.

Obviously, creating custom Advent calendars (especially if you are creating more than one) requires a bit of time. With Advent App, you do not have to complete your calendars before you send links to recipients. Every time you update, the recipient will automatically receive the update when he/she opens the app (they can’t open days ahead anyway). You can set up push notifications to remind you to update your calendar(s) if you don’t have them finished. Check out video instruction of how to install the app on your device’s format below: