Advent messages on Facebook.com
«Imagine if there were no people left—then we wouldn’t need God anymore, would we?» This message was sent to Smas.ch subscribers on their cell phones on December 11, 2010. The name «Smas.ch» stands for Short Message Advent System Switzerland and is the country’s first free SMS Advent calendar.
The calendar was invented in 2002 by the youth pastoral care team in the Liestal deanery under the motto "Heart instead of commerce". It was born out of a need on the part of young people to counter today's consumer-oriented festivities with actual Christmas values such as love, friendship and peace. The aim of the project: depth in 160 characters, in the language and on the medium of young people. Today, Smas.ch is supported by the Catholic churches of AG, BL, BS, FR, GR, LU, SG, TG, ZG and the Reformed churches of BL, BS, BE, GR, JU, SG, SO, ZG as well as Jungwacht and Blauring. Smas.ch is run by the youth offices of the respective cantonal churches.
In 2011, they returned to their pioneering role and enlisted the help of Kargo Kommunikation, an agency for networked communication, for the tenth anniversary. The brief: to program and design the "very first real" Advent calendar for the social media channel. At Facebook.com/theadventcalendar you can open a little door every day in December and find a picture and a text to think about behind it. The agency has also created the Smas.ch editor under the direction of Christoph Balsiger. This allows users to design the individual doors with their own text and image and send them to their friends. This leap onto Facebook is possible thanks to the financial commitment of many churches in German-speaking Switzerland, who want to give young people something that suits them.
