MANY of us know that Advent is approaching because fascinating pieces of stationery called Advent calendars make their appearance in the shops around this time.

These are often highly pictorial, being usually designed for children, and the objective is to remove 24 tiny "windows" on the calendar at the rate of one per day until Christmas Eve. Behind each window there may be a Christmas scene, perhaps religious, perhaps not, and this is one modern means of creating some modest excitement on the approach to this most popular of seasonal celebrations.

So what is Advent? Its real significance has been lost in our headlong dash towards a non-religious society but the word suggests preparation for an arrival of some kind. In this case, of course, it is a preparation for the celebrations of the birth of Christ and when the church was an important presence in our towns and villages, Advent was regarded as essential part of our lives at this time of year.

In many ways, it was similar to Lent heralding the arrival of Easter. Before the Reformation, when England was a Catholic country, the season of Advent contained many of the facets of Lent. For example, on some days there had to be fasting and abstinence and so the Wednesdays and Fridays of Advent were considered fast days.

Marriages were allowed, however, but they had to be conducted without undue pomp and festivity, and neither the Te Deum or Gloria in Excelsis were sung.

The season of Advent is about four weeks long and begins officially either on the Sunday nearest the feast of St Andrew, or on St Andrew's Day itself if that happens to fall on a Sunday. St Andrew's Day was once known as Andermas because masses were said in the saint's honour and it is celebrated on November 30.

The date of the beginning of Advent is therefore moveable and this year it arrives on Sunday, December 1. This is usually known as Advent Sunday and is the beginning of the church year, except in Greece where that year starts in the middle of November; there are always four Sundays in Advent and it ends on Christmas Eve.

So what kind of events might one have expected during Advent? In fact, the prelude to Christmas used to begin on the Sunday before Advent, and this became known as Stir-up Sunday. Country women would set the day aside to stir the mixture of their Christmas puddings and it was always considered a fortuitious day for making them. It seems, however, that the name of that day was not connected with this charming old custom - in the mass, the collect for that day began with the words "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people."

There were no specific customs on Advent Sunday itself in England, but in the Catholic countries of Europe, particularly in Rome and Naples, images of the Virgin Mary, or paintings of her, were placed at street corners and other public places as a reminder of the reason for Christmas.

Country people would make pilgrimages into those cities, often carrying musical instruments, and they would create music before the images, sometimes also acting scenes from the nativity. In rural Yorkshire, a similar custom was practised during Advent and this involved what became known as Advent images. Children would decorate a small box of some kind and place inside it small dolls which represented the nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus and the animals in the manger at Bethlehem. The children would then tour the houses in the village during Advent.

Both this Yorkshire custom and the Continental practice of displaying images during Advent probably helped to spread use of the praesepio, or crib as we call it. So far as is known, the first occasion this was used was on Christmas Eve, 1224, when St Francis of Assissi adopted the idea in a village church at Greccio in Italy. Joseph and Mary were represented by real people, while a real baby lay in the manger with a real ass and ox tethered nearby. Mass was celebrated and Francis then preached on the topic of the Christmas season.

On the second Sunday of Advent, however, it was customary in England to eat scripture cake. The ingredients are in the scriptures, e.g. 4 cups of 1 Kings IV v.22 (flour), one cup of Judges V v.25 (butter), two cups of Jeremiah VI, v.20 (sugar), two cups of Nahum III v.12 (figs), two cups of 1 Samuel XXX v12 (raisins), two cups of Numbers XVII, v9 (almonds), 1 cups of Judges IV v19 (milk), six Jeremiah XVII v ll (eggs), two teaspoons of 1 Samuel XIV v.25 (honey), two teaspoons of Amos IV v5 (baking powder), a pinch of Leviticus II v13 (salt) and add to taste 2 Chronicles IX v9 (spices).

And then, remarkably suddenly, Christmas arrived.

AMONG the flocks of birds which will be coming to our islands for the winter, there may be some bramblings. How many we can expect will depend upon the scarcity of food and the severity of the winter in their breeding grounds which are in Scandinavia and the northern regions of Russia.

Generally, they tend to arrive here in October or early November and usually they remain until April although they have been known to linger longer in the northern parts of Scotland.

This is a very handsome bird but most of us will have difficulty distinguishing it from a chaffinch. In the summer and during the breeding season, the male has striking black feathers about his head, back, wings and tail. His breast is an orange colour with white lower parts, and this orange tint also shows on the shoulders of his wings. The wings, mainly with black feathers, have white bars and he has also a prominent white rump which is highly visible when in flight.

In the winter, however, when he is in this country, those sharp colours fade and it is at that stage he looks remarkably similar to his cousin, the chaffinch. The female brambling looks rather like the male dressed in winter plumage; although her colours and markings are very similar to those of the male, they are much more subdued and when both sexes mingle with flocks of chaffinches at this time of year in our country, it is most difficult to distinguish one from the other.

Indeed, it seems the birds themselves even get confused because, even though they tend to live in different environments while in this country, there are recorded instances of the two birds inter-breeding. I'm afraid I do not know the name of any such offspring!

Chaffinches are all around us during the entire year, both in our gardens and in the countryside, but bramblings tend to prefer more isolated places like coniferous forests or deep woodlands where they can find plenty of seeds and nuts. These form the main part of their diet which in turn means that if supplies are short, they might also be found on stubble fields or around farm buildings where grain is stored.

Even so, they might mingle with flocks of chaffinches, greenfinches and other species which means they might not be noticed by casual observers. This presents a nice challenge for us during winter walks - going brambling!

DOTTED around this region are lots of farms and other large buildings bearing the name biggin. On many occasions, this is prefixed by the term "new", thus creating lots and lots of Newbiggins. There are Newbiggins in Teesdale, Swaledale, Wensleydale, Eskdale and elsewhere, as well as a Newbegin also in Eskdale.

Indeed, in one area of Eskdale there is Newbiggin High Farm, Low Newbiggin, Newbiggin Hall and Newbiggin Hall Farm, but no village of that name. Instead, these are all farmsteads spread across a compact part of the countryside but in fact the word biggin means nothing more than a building.

New biggin, it would appear, therefore means a new building and this makes sense when applied to the newly built farms of some past era. Quite often, farmers themselves would refer to a new structure as a biggin and thus Newbiggin Farm might well boast several new biggins within its boundaries.

Now, of course, like so many New Inns, all these newbiggins are quite old