Much of the fictional television content targeting children and young audiences is currently made specifically for them, targeting their particular interests and intended to be watched on their private screens or together with friends rather than in the company of parents or other adults.
Abstract This article aims at characterizing the Danish Christmas calendar as a TV institution and a meeting place for the traditions of the almanac, folklore and the history of culture. Against the background of a brief outline of the history of Danish Christmas calendars, the article explores ways in which this traditional genre has succeeded in renewing itself. The so-called Pyrus series, TV 2’s Christmas calendars during the mid-1990s, exhibited folklore, myth and cultural history in a combination of entertainment and information. They were succeeded by calendars such as Jul i Valhal/‘Christmas in Valhalla’ (2005), Absalons hemmelighed/‘The Secret of Absalon’ (2006), Mikkel og guldkortet/‘Mikkel and the Golden Card’ (2008) and Pagten/‘The Covenant’ (2009). Some of these added cultural criticism to the repertoire of the genre.