Life was so much easier when your mum would buy your advent calendar for you. These days, by the time most of us get around to it, it's December 13th, and we eat it in one drunken go after a night out. This year, we reckon you should swerve buying a boring old chocolate calendar and make use of 2014's whizzkid techno calendars instead - here's our roundup of the best.
**Urban Outfitters & The Debrief **
We don't like to toot our own horn or anything, but our advent calendar efforts are pretty spectacular. We’ve teamed up with Urban Outfitters to give away 12 amazing prizes throughout December via our Snapchat account. Prizes consist of New Years Eve outfits for you and your 3 mates, an Urban Outfitters exclusive Crosley Cruiser Turntable, a one-off experience for you and your friends at Winterville, an exclusive bundle of Urban Outfitters Homeware, and a Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 Camera.
**Whistles **
Whistles have an advent calendar’s worth of daily giveaways, making you want to visit the site every day to take part. You only have to sign up to the newsletter to win brilliant prizes like a new pair of shoes every month for a year. Plus rubbing the digital snow away from each door is remarkably more enjoyable than we expected.
Love Magazine
The annual Love magazine advent calendaris back and is as saucy as ever, with a daily video of the hottest girls in fashion. Check out today’s video of Miranda Kerr in tiny pants and antlers. Much better inspiration for a hot bod in 2015 than a daily chocolate. (Although we won’t judge if you watch the video and eat chocolate while doing so - as we'll be doing the same thing.)
**Topshop **
Topshop are running 24 days of festive treats at their Oxford Circus flagship store, from hair braiding to personalised Lola cupcakes and competitions to win tonnes of prizes. We’re especially excited about December 24th, when you will get a free lippie with every dress.
**Care Bears Christmas **
Getting up every morning in December is bloody hard. So here’s something pink, cute and incredibly ridiculous to make it slightly easier. (Or even more irritating, depending on your personality...) The Care Bears advent calendar. Yep. We went there. Expect games, decorating challenges, and caring bear related activities.
**The Big Issue **
This is a serious one - each day the Big Issue advent calendar will tell you the story of one of their vendors. Today’s is a super interesting read - all about Simon Mott, who was the first Big Issue seller to invest in a smartphone and card reader so that customers could pay by card. Savvy.
**25 days of Christmas **
Imagine Candy Crush Saga, only with Christmas decorations instead of sweets, and you’ve pretty much nailed the gist of this app. Each day you can unlock new levels and games. Good luck going cold turkey in January.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.