The Bonne Maman Advent Calendar is incredibly popular. This Jewish reporter asks why.

This August, I purchased my first-ever Advent calendar.

Yes, it’s wildly early. No, I don’t celebrate Christmas.

Growing up Jewish, I’ll admit Advent calendars were a little bit sexy. Twenty-four days of gifts felt a lot more exciting than eight. But I never had enough of a reason to take the plunge. Then came the rush of jam-related TikTok unboxings.

Since 2017, Bonne Maman — among the biggest players in the jam and jelly scene — annually releases an Advent calendar featuring 24 one-ounce jars of special edition jams. Very quickly, the jams took off as a cult-favorite, selling out long before December and even hitting resale markets.

So when self-styled #Jamvent lovers spotted the 2023 edition for sale in August, I was on it — truly like special-release jelly on toast. My box arrived last month and I’m not alone.

Across social media platforms, the Bonne Maman special releases — especially the Advent calendar — are widely celebrated.

In her spare time, Katia Hansen — who runs an immigration and human rights nonprofit out of San Diego — moderates a private Jamvent-focused Facebook group.

Hansen, who uses she/they pronouns, describes themselves as a “Jamvent nut.” This is her third year as a devotee.

“[In 2020], I had a significant loss in my life and was anxious about how that was going to feel for the holidays,” she said. “I decided to find a way to connect with people I love during that busy time in a way that wasn’t onerous and that was through joy.”

They gifted a few different Advent calendars to friends with the specific request to touch base throughout the month as they opened each day’s treasures.

“As I was looking for unique calendars, I found the Bonne Maman calendar and thought that was a brilliant option for a friend who likes to bake — so I got one for her and one for myself,” she said. “Each day we checked in about whether we liked the flavor combination and how it paired with whatever we were eating it with. We also had multiple conversations about what to do with the little jars when we were done, and of course, the appropriate jam to peanut butter/butter/bread/scone ratio — we never did agree.”

By the next year, Hansen gifted two sets to friends. By last year, she gifted seven across four states.

The gifts expanded into a network between Hansen and her friend Rachel Rott after they gifted the calendar to each other in subsequent years. They launched the Facebook group as an easy way for the calendar recipients to exchange reviews and recipes.

“These Advent calendars are a fun way to have a little bit of intentionality in each day,” Hansen said. “A small daily food ritual in the midst of a very busy and frenetic season.”

She added that some of the group’s members include ministers who began opening their calendars on the first day of Advent instead of Dec. 1.

But make no mistake, the sets aren’t just for Gentiles.

Several Advent calendar purchasers said they look past the marketing and buy the set for the purpose of enjoying or breaking up and regifting the little jars of jams. One Reddit user went as far as verifying with the company that a previous year’s set was kosher so they could regift the jars to people who keep kosher.

It helps that the jars themselves are not marked with any sort of Advent calendar packaging. And it gave me an idea.

Now that I have the Advent calendar just chilling in my kitchen, I’ve decided there’s no use waiting three more months until I can enjoy it. It’s time for us Jews to get our own taste of the Advent calendar. And what better way to start than with Rosh Hashanah — a.k.a. the Jewish New Year — this weekend?

*Be warned, there are Advent calendar flavor spoilers ahead if you care about that sort of thing*

Appropriately, the calendar comes with 23 jars of special jams and jellies, plus one jar of straight honey. So I’ll be starting my Jamvent using the honey for drizzling over apples (for a sweet Rosh Hashanah) and the caramel with cinnamon spread folded into some rugelach. Alas, none of this year’s spreads include apples, which are a Rosh Hashanah staple ingredient.

For those observing Yom Kippur, the fig with cardamom spread feels like a delicate enough flavor to pair with a slice of honey cake for breaking fast.

Next on the calendar will be Sukkot, which seems like the perfect opportunity to use Bonne Maman’s raspberry with dark chocolate spread stuffed into a loaf of babka.

Come December — and prior to Christmas! — it will be Hanukkah time. I’d like to attempt sufganiyot (the jelly doughnut’s Jewish cousin) stuffed with BM’s rhubarb and strawberry spread. An olive oil citrus cake using the calendar’s lemon and yuzu spread could also be a refreshing treat.

Other standouts to me include the apricot lavender spread, which sounds like a dreamy filling for Purim hamantaschen (assuming I can truly hold out on using that jar until March) and the peach with mint or wild blueberry with balm leaves spreads, which could be a literal interpretation of Tu B’shevat — February’s celebration of the new year of trees and spring’s awakening.

Besides baking, the one-ounce jars are the perfect petite serving for the gin and jam of your dreams (I’m looking at you, cherry with pink peppercorn).

When I told my parents about my Jamvent awakening, my dad immediately expressed his support.

“Great company,” he wrote in a text. “Saved Jews during the Holocaust. We use empties to store leftovers.”

While his recollection may not be 100% accurate, my dad is one of the thousands of people who heard an iteration of this story.

In 2021, Michael Perino was shopping at a New Jersey grocery store. On X (formerly Twitter), he described at the time a chance encounter with an elderly woman buying Bonne Maman.

Perino said the woman told him she always buys the company’s raspberry preserves because she was a Holocaust survivor.

“During the war, the family that owns the company hid my family in Paris. So now I always buy it,” Perino retold in a tweet. “And whenever I go to the store, my grandkids remind me, ‘Bubbe, don’t forget to buy the jelly.’”

Perino’s telling of the exchange went mega-viral — with the original tweet boasting more than 26,000 likes to date.

“It was a beautiful moment,” Perino told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “When she gave the explanation, you know, it’s one of these things where, kind of, your heart stops for a moment, because it’s totally unexpected.”

But no one has been able to verify the story since and Bonne Maman has declined to comment on its validity.

“The family prefers to maintain privacy and does not comment on inquiries about personal matters,” Bonne Maman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement at the time.

Still, the story — and versions of it — circulated widely, even prompting Snopes to publish a fact-checking article on the phenomenon. While Snopes wasn’t able to verify if Bonne Maman or its founders may have helped Holocaust victims, the publication deemed that based on some of the details and the timeline, the claim was “at least possible.”

I don’t have the heart to explain all of that to my dad — it kind of feels like ruining his version of Santa Claus. Maybe I’ll figure out something to send him in one of my empty Jamvent jars instead.