If that survey on the time a typical mother spends preparing for Christmas (13 days) is accurate, many women will already have jumped the gun. But according to an old English tradition, this weekend is when the count-down to December 25th properly begins.
As every good Protestant knows, "Stir-up Sunday" - the last before Advent - takes its name from the Collect, read in churches on that day, which begins: "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people." More than wills are stirred, however. In a playful twist, the prayer was historically interpreted as an injunction to start work on the Christmas puddings, and pre-Advent Sunday was thus set aside for the ceremony.
Folklore decreed that the mixture be stirred with a wooden spoon, clockwise, and that all family members should take a turn: mothers, fathers, children, in that order. The finished puddings were then put away for a month to ferment, or mature, or whatever it is puddings do.
That frenzy of cooking aside, this part of the year was and remains a time for waiting and turning on lights. In the pagan Advent, which also begins on Sunday, it is four weeks to the winter solstice and the return of the sun. The start of Christian Advent, a week later, marks the count-down to the coming of the Light of the World.
But whether you're a committed pagan or Christian, or neither, the dreariness of November compels you to perform ceremonies of illumination at this time. From Brown Thomas's window display to garish plastic Santas in front gardens, the god of darkness demands a sacrifice. Failing which, his wrath may afflict you with a biochemical imbalance in the hypothalamus, better known as Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Some people go too far, of course. The Irish rugby authorities, for example, who with either cruel humour or misplaced optimism have arranged that a team called the Pacific Islands will light up Lansdowne Road on the last Sunday in November.
This may have been intended as a sacrifice, to ensure that the final game at the old stadium would be played in balmy conditions, with free-flowing rugby and the Garda band performing The Girl from Ipanema at half-time in grass skirts. But if it was, a glance at the weather forecast suggests the sacrifice has bee refused.
I went to the San Marino game two weeks ago because it was the last soccer international to be played at the ground. It was a classically awful November day, with showers of rain relieved only by periods of heavy drizzle, so that we sat through the match - as in so many previous Novembers - with damp clothes.
I had no problem agreeing with Andrea Bocelli, who sang Time to Say Goodbye on the PA. But the mood for closure was even stronger among my companions, who have had a block booking for the same crap seats in a corner of the West stand ever since the Jack Charlton era.
Their position meant that not only was one goalmouth partly blocked by a pillar, but the giant screen at the opposite end was completely obscured the side of the stand. This was the same screen to which the chirpy PA man directed us at half-time for a selection of golden (and to us invisible) moments from Lansdowne's soccer history. Suffice to say that, as they said a last goodbye to their seats at the end of the game, my friends wanted to perform a lighting-up ceremony, with matches.
Despite this experience, I returned to Lansdowne last Sunday for the game against Australia, because this was the last-ever serious rugby match to be played there. Sure enough, Time to Say Goodbye was on the PA again. And incredibly, the weather was even worse, with a vicious wind added to the inevitable rain. The IRFU has fondly called these the "autumn" internationals, but the only hint of autumn was that every leaf in Dublin 4 that had not previously fallen was blown across the pitch during the game. You half expected the trees to follow them.
Now it's the Pacific Islands' turn to visit, and the rain is forecast to be accompanied by "strong to severe gales". No doubt Bocelli will be singing again, but I won't be there. I took the hint, second time around, and said goodbye last week.
A sub-theme of that song, incidentally, is light. The English version (it was written in Italian - wisely, in my opinion) includes the following lines: "Yes I know there is no light/ in a room/ where the sun is not there." Later, the singer calls on his lover to "show everyone my heart, which you set alight". Another line urges: "Enclose within me/ the light you encountered on the street." It may lose something in translation, or maybe it's just as bad in Italian. But perhaps it was written in November, which would forgive everything. The gloominess of this month explains lots of things - including, presumably, the 7,000 people who have, incredibly, already registered to run a 10k race through the Dublin Port Tunnel on the second Sunday of Advent.
It has been a long wait for this very expensive piece of infrastructure, which will be opened to traffic shortly afterwards. There have been dark periods when it looked like it would never happen. But as surely as the turning of the year, the great moment at last looms. There is light at the start of the tunnel.