CUT, PASTE & COME HOME · ADVENT 2026
The Story
of 2026
A little closer to home.
When this Advent calendar began, the pleasure was simple: a group of friends making things, trading ideas, and opening a little door each day to see what someone had come up with. Cut something out. Put something unexpected beside it. Follow a joke a little further than good judgment suggests. Share it with people who might appreciate the effort, or at least wonder what was wrong with us.
For 2026, we want to find our way back to that original flavor. A refresh. A little more room for the small idea, the familiar face, the joke that starts among friends and somehow ends up in the calendar. We’re leaving room for a story to emerge as we make it.
There is, however, someone else at the table this year. The calendar has arms now. It can reach for the scissors, shuffle the scraps, and offer a suggestion nobody asked for. We’re giving our AI collaborator a place in the proceedings, in the form of the calendar itself. After all these years of putting things into it, it seems only fair to let it put something in.
AI is part of the conversation as well as part of the work. We can bring it a half-formed idea, try its suggestion, argue with the result, and find something together that none of us had quite pictured at the start. As the tools become useful, we’re learning where to invite them in. John, Chris, Adam, Robin, and the Advent calendar: five collaborators, with the four humans still deciding what goes behind the doors.
We’ve also come to the modest realization that we don’t have to make everything as absurd as possible. Sometimes an idea is ready before it acquires three extra plots, an elaborate mythology, and a reason to apologize to the neighbors. We get to choose what’s worth making and when to leave well enough alone. The calendar is welcome to disagree. It has already been informed that having arms does not give it the casting vote.
Rest assured, our patented brand of absurdity will continue. Expect the odd turns, questionable decisions, and things that made us laugh enough to share. This year, they’ll be a little closer to home, with more of the people and pleasures that started this whole thing. Pull up a chair. There’s room for one more.
John, Chris, Adam, Robin
& the Advent calendar