First of Advent - twice over!

It's the first Sunday in Advent, the day we light the first candle. However, It's also the 1 December, the first day you open one of the boxes on the Advent calendar. I suppose it's about one year in seven that these two advents (sacred and profane?) coincide but it feels satisfying when they do.
In this part of the world the first Sunday in Advent is traditionally the day all the shops reveal their Christmas windows. Which makes it the day crowds of people wander the streets of the town, checking out said windows. It's also the day lots of groups are out selling cakes, lottery tickets, handicrafts etc.
Lions had organised a Father Christmas (Jul tomte) who handed out free Christmas presents to any passing children. The Left Party ( and many others) was offering alcohol free mulled wine, cakes and biscuits, and coffee to those passing by. Our favourite Café Sigrid had a wonderful choice of cakes, beautiful to look at, delicious to eat.  By the time we headed for home I was feeling as if I had eaten just a little more sweet carbohydrate than I should have.
The local fire brigade was out on the square showing off two fire engines, giving free red plastic helmets to children, and letting kids, large and small, try out using a fire extinguisher. This was definitely one of the most popular activities and became the subject of today's blip.
You can see the ice on the ground here, the result of a day's rain onto frozen ground. The local council had laid out enough gravel that we could walk around without problems, so credit to those who were at work early this morning fixing the pavements for the rest of us.
In other news, we plugged our electric car into a public charger for the very first time. It wasn't a high speed charger but it filled half our battery in two hours. It was good to know it works and that it is considerably cheaper than fossil fuel.
The religious element of our first of Advent was listening to the church service on the radio. The music was a good mix of religious and traditional, and the singing, by various choirs, was excellent.
Normally we'd have lit that first Advent candle today but the house will remain in ordered disarray until our new windows are finished off, which should be tomorrow. We'll celebrate with a big clean up and that first Advent candle!
The extra shows the sunset over the South Sound - on most other days it would have been the blip!