It's a calendar reminder to excite tinsel addicts, infuriate the Grinches and leave the rest of us shaking our heads at how fast the year has gone. Wednesday marks 100 days until Christmas.
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While search engine trend analysis shows it won't be until late October that most of us will start switching our minds to shopping, the reality for many businesses is that December 25 is fast moving up the priority list.
For Christmas tree farmer Keng Tan and his wife Barbara, the job of pruning trees at their farm near Gundaroo is almost a year-round occupation.
While they won't officially open until December 1, they are busy preparing the trees at Christmas Tree Keng for when the customers start venturing from Canberra, or as far away as Wagga Wagga and Bateman's Bay.
Their trees take four to five years to mature, and the Tans make the effort to prune each tree once a year. Mr Tan has been photographed using a samurai sword, but admits it's a joke and a nod to his heritage.
Despite expecting another good year, Mr Tan lamented that he lost a lot of young seedlings due to the extreme heat in January and February.
"Farming is a bit unpredictable; don't give up your day job," he warned.
Meanwhile, Canberra Christmas Trees, founded by Angus Isles in 2013, delivers, installs and removes freshly cut Christmas trees around the capital.
Isles said the orders had already begun to trickle in, and usually carried on deep into December.
To reach all his customers in the December period, Isles and his younger brother, Elliot, have to wake up at 5.30am and knock off just before midnight.
"You just need a few coffees, and the job gets done," Elliot said.
Just outside Canberra is the Bredbo Christmas Barn, a Christmas-only boutique store run by Leanne and Neville de Smet. It opens from June until December each year.
The couple spends four months a year preparing the shop and setting up displays for the peak season, with November their busiest month of the year.
Having opened in 2005, and serving customers as far away as Melbourne and Sydney, Bredbo Christmas Barn seems to eschew the age of technology, focusing on its physical, rather than online presence.
"Most of our sales are from customers coming through the door. We don't do an online store. It's all about making people feel good - it's the wow factor. It's not something you could replicate online," Mrs de Smet said.
What is apparent online is just when Christmas grabs our collective attention. Google Trends, which shows how often a particular search term is entered, hints at the faintest interest in Christmas about now.
Google Australia small business marketing manager Richard Flanagan said that with 100 days to go, data showed "Aussies are beginning to think about Christmas".
"More than ever before, small businesses around Australia are getting online and making sure they can provide Christmas presents for the growing number of people shopping on the internet," he said.
Google Trends data shows that last year "Christmas gift ideas" began its rapid rise in popularity from October 27 before peaking in the first week of December. "Christmas trees" also peaked in popularity in the first week of December.
But showing that for some of us, at least, the real countdown doesn't begin until single digits, the general search "Christmas shopping" peaked in the week of December 22-25.
Have you started preparing for Christmas yet? Let us know in the comments.