The once well-known Video Arts – originally a maker of training videos under the direction of ‘greats’ from the entertainment world including Sir Antony Jay and John Cleese and now a supplier of video, e-learning and m-learning courses – has produced an online Advent Calendar.

The Video Arts Advent Calendar (http://www.videoarts.com/2011/adventcalendar/) offers small clips from Video Arts’ library of titles – perhaps to offer viewers almost a month of performance-enhancing tips and techniques, or at least to advertise these products to an audience brimming with indiscriminate seasonal goodwill.

However, although Video Arts is keen to get everyone learning, enhancing their knowledge bases and skill sets, even it draws the line when it comes to Christmas time. Unlike other Advent Calendars, Video Arts’ only has 23 doors – not the 24 doors of a ‘secular’ Advent Calendar or the 25 doors of a ‘Christian’ Advent Calendar. This leaves devotees of the Video Arts’ Advent Calendar the whole of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on which to merely contemplate the free but, paradoxically, valuable lessons they will have learnt during this coming month.