Ebenezer Scrooge was the cold-hearted miser who despised Christmas at the beginning of the famous Charles Dickens novel, A Christmas Carol. I won’t tell you porky pies, but this time of year is not my favourite. However, it is the beginning of December now and so I will not begrudge people putting their Christmas lights up…. apart from the ones who fill their front gardens with lights and waste a huge amount of energy!
I get the feeling that I need to add another 15-20 minutes onto every journey I make for the next month to ensure that I arrive on time. Jaunts today were not too troublesome but I can imagine the town/city centres are not the best places to be right now.
Advent calendars are undoubtedly out in force in family homes across the globe and, doing some research earlier today, I was surprised to find the name Advent used over and over again as a first name in some families of yesteryear – particularly the Alcock, Blandford, Hunstone and Swindell ‘clans’ – and generally in Northern England. The strange thing about Advent as a surname is that there are only three records on FreeBMD – Sarah Advent born Prestwich RD, March quarter 1894 and the marriage and death of Joseph Advent in Norwich RD (1946 and 1965 respectively). Where was Joseph born? And what happened to Sarah?
These days, advent calendars seem to take a variety of themes. Many take the form of a large rectangular card with 24 windows. The calendar windows open to reveal an image, a poem, a portion of a story or a small gift of some sort (like a toy, or a chocolate). However, I have seen some fairly outlandish advent calendars and although the concept was originally for children, many adults now have advent calendars too!
I am sorry to say that I am not in any way prepared to welcome advent. The only thing I have sorted is my Secret Santa present for BNI! That person should feel very honoured that they were my first Christmas present purchase of the 2015 festive season!
