DIY Advent calendars are way too much work – but I don’t know how to stop | Zoe Williams

AAdvent calendars are a nightmare when you’re divorced. The kids come back from their other house with Toblerone that’s been unopened for days, which is fun and delicious after, say, eight years, but tear-inducingly poignant when the breakup is fresh. So I took matters into my own hands a long time ago as there was a real danger that I would put everyone off Toblerone. I got a few little DIY Advent packs from Sainsbury’s, thinking I could just fill them on the days they would wake up with me and then they wouldn’t be left with a sad backlog.

This didn’t work for my youngest. He said the biggest advantage of having divorced parents is that you get two of everything. So I proceeded to fill all the drawers, although not necessarily with candy. That coincided with a year where I wasn’t too busy with work and stuff, and I did my best. If you can give a miniature thing a name, then it ended up in a drawer; tiny tape measures, tiny note-writing sets, ceramic kitties, lip balm. Cuteness overload. This didn’t work for my oldest, who said the pressure of how much appreciation I expected each morning was putting him off his breakfast. I said, “Is it me?” Or are you full of Lindt pistachio truffles?” And he said, “No, that’s definitely you.”

The last few years have been chaos. It’s actually really hard to find 24 things small enough. Things that bring joy to a 10-year-old – stamps shaped like squirrels, erasers shaped like rockets – are not at all interesting to late-stage teenagers, but nothing they like (Smirnoff, K-pop) would fit in a drawer. Actually, I’m the only one still immersed in the ritual, but if I gave up on it, I would be admitting to the inexorable march of time, something I’m not willing to do.

Still, I’m not invested enough to do it right, and I just realized this morning that it’s even December. It’s not as ruinous as when I let rampant tooth fairy inflation take over because I realized at midnight that I had nothing smaller than a tenner. But it’s in this stadium.