We've had Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night, while in the States, they just celebrated Thanksgiving and the capitalist hell that is Black Friday.
The Coke truck is winging its way around the fake snow-filled streets. George Michael is appearing on the radio more and more. German markets - which incidentally bear very little relation to anything that exists in Germany - are springing up in the centre of even the most provincial of towns. You get the point here - it's nearly Christmas.
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In fact, today is exactly a month away, so we can officially now start to get excited.
That means an entire month of Christmas parties, winter wonderlands, mulled wine, mince pies, good cheer and merriment. Alternatively, it means a month of being forced to be nice to your colleagues, standing around outside in the cold while pretending to like warm wine, being fleeced for hundreds of quid buying crap presents and capping off the whole unpleasantness by having a week in which you have to put up with your most irritating relatives.
It's a time that divides people: those who like Christmas tend to totally love it, diving head first into the merriment and revelry, while those who hate it cannot stand the forced niceties and festivity. And they really, really hate being called Humbugs.
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This year's putrid Christmas hell has begun in the grand style, with a slew of reports from across America of fights at shopping malls as bargain hunters piled into each other in an attempt to get a telly for slightly less than normal. A man was shot in the wrist in New Jersey, which in turn caused a stampede of shoppers, while in New York, two people were stabbed in the Black Friday sales.
"It doesn't really feel like Christmas until now," said Kim Bryant, a shopper outside a mall in Denver, Colorado. I mean, that's true, but probably because it isn't really Christmas. There's good reason why it doesn't feel like Christmas in November: it's November.
In happier news on our side of the Pond, we can expect an actual Winter Wonderland for the big day. Weather forecasters are expecting a white Christmas, with an extended cold snap expected to hit. While cold snaps are generally terrible, if it results in Christmas snow then I'm pretty happy to forgive it.
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"We expect this winter to be different to the last seven milder winters we have had, with an increased risk for colder intrusions across the northern half of Europe and below normal temperatures through January and February," said John Hammond, chief meteorologist for Weathertrending.
"We do think that next week's 'battleground' scenario could recur several times in the weeks ahead, giving the potential for further snowfalls in the run-up to Christmas."
After a summer that really looked like summer and turned Manchester into Magaluf, then let's have a winter that really looks like winter.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Black Friday, Christmas, Shopping, Community