The usual liturgical colour in Western Christianity for Advent is purple or blue, which symbolises royalty and repentance, and it’s the colour of the dawn before the sun rises. In England, especially in the northern counties, there was a custom (now extinct) for poor women to carry around the “Advent images,” two dolls dressed to represent Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary. A halfpenny coin was expected from everyone who saw them for good luck, whereas not being visited by the doll-bearers was an omen of bad luck.

One of the Advent celebrations in Italy is the entry into Rome in the last days of Advent of the pifferari, or bagpipe players. They play before the shrines of Mary, like shepherds played when they came to Bethlehem to pay homage to the infant Jesus.

In recent times, the commonest observance of Advent outside church circles has been the keeping of an Advent calendar or Advent candle, with one door being opened in the calendar, or one section of the candle being burnt, on each day in December leading up to Christmas Eve. The keeping of an Advent wreath is also a common practice, with four or five candles extending from the wreath.

Chromebooks boot in 8 seconds and resume operation instantly. They don’t need an anti-virus application, because they run the first consumer operating system designed from the ground up to defend against the ongoing threat of malware and viruses: they use the principle of “defence in depth” to provide multiple layers of protection, including sandboxing, data encryption and verified boot. They have built-in Wi-Fi and 3G, so you can get connected almost anytime and anywhere, provided that an accessible wireless network is available. They also have Google Cloud Print built in, allowing you to print to any cloud-connected printer from anywhere.

As we have already blogged about, it seems that we are moving towards a web-based future. What’s next? Further innovation is probably just round the corner.