Chuck away the wrappings, ditch the tree, bin the the turkey bones (never did make that stock...) and get ready for a knees-up on New Year's Eve - or an evening of pre-recorded TV programmes, e.g. Jools H urging us to enjoy ourselves.
But Christmas has, we're led to believe by an old song, twelve days to it, culminating in Twelfth Night, the eve of Epiphany for Christians, which was the day the three kings visited the baby Jesus. All of these twelve days made up Christmastide.
In "Village Christmas," a delightful if idealised evocation, Laurie Lee makes it plain that, when he was a lad, nothing much happened until the night before Christmas Eve, when everyone swung into action. But then his childhood Cotswold Christmas was all very local - no-one driving hundreds of miles on waterlogged roads to see family!
OK, we're not any longer, despite Mr Cameron's remarks, a majority Christian country, according to assorted opinion polls. But we seem to have swapped a lovely idea - that there are twelves days of Christmas - with an almost hysterically commercial build-up weeks before The Day, and then a flat few days until the next year starts.
Twelfth Night was, in Tudor and Elizabethan times, a right old party, overseen by the Lord of Misrule. The usual order of things was re-established at midnight. Shakespeare wrote one of his greatest comedies for Twelfth Night at court.
Happily, there are still some madnesses around on Twelfth Night, some with quite possibly pre-Christian roots. People go wassailing around then, and mummers do their extraordinary stuff to increasingly enthusiastic crowds.
We can't turn the clock back. But in our house decorations will stay up and candles (or their electric replacements) will stay lit until Twelfth Night. And who knows, we may even have a drink or three on the 5th.
Wassail!
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