Whatever your personal feelings about sprouts, they are undoubtedly a fixture at this time of year and still a back-breaking crop to harvest in often cold, dark, muddy fields. This is Sprout Picking, Monmouthshire (c1947, Manchester Art Gallery) by Evelyn Dunbar who co-wrote and illustrated Gardeners' Choice. 

Any advent calendar worth its salt has to include a snow-scene. This is 'Huntingfield Cottage Garden' by David Gentleman, one of the many wonderful illustrations in In the Country (2014). The words and pictures as he "leads the reader around the places he loves" in his corner of Suffolk make this a delightful and soothing read.

Tomorrow, 13th December, is the Feast of Saint Lucy or Lucia Day, a celebration of her roles as both a Christian saint and a bearer of light in the dark Scandinavian winters. Candlelit processions are held at dawn or dusk, and traditionally Lucia wears ‘light in her hair’, which today means a crown of electric candles in a wreath on her head, although in the past there were real candles, as in this lovely watercolour (1908) by Carl Larsson.

This, with its appealing suggestion to prioritise lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner over actual Christmas shopping is perhaps our favourite seasonal poster in the extensive London Transport Museum collection. It dates from the late 1920s, artist unknown.