Yes, it’s still 108 days until we get all ho-ho-ho-ish, or 109 sleeps if you prefer, but the Bendigo retail sector has decided it’s not to early to get in some Christmas shopping.

DTM’s supermarket is selling Christmas mince pies – with a use-by date of September 20. Perhaps left over from Christmas in July?

At least one of those cut-price stores has had tinsel and sparkling lights displayed for a week now. It is already discounting the price. We expect that by December they will be free. How long before our stores start playing seasonal muzak?

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There ought to be a law. You should be banned from even saying the word Christmas before mid-November.

Around the world there are various conventions – most of them ignored by retailers.

In some British communities, it’s improper to mention Christmas before Remembrance Day, November 11, but after that it’s a free-for-all. The French do have laws banning Christmas sales to no more than four weeks in Paris and six weeks in the rest of the country.

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Mind you, some timing conventions have improved over the years. The Bendigo Advertiser of January 9, 1895 reported on efforts to bring in standard time zones up and down the east coast. Good grief, we think it can get complicated now when Daylight Saving Times vary. It was worse then.

Here’s how the Addy described it: “At the present time, when it Is noon at Brisbane, it is 32 minutes past 11am in Sydney: 27 minutes past 11am in Melbourne, 37 minutes past 11am in Hobart, 2 minutes past 11am in Adelaide, 27 minutes past 1pm in Wellington, and 31 minutes past 9am in Perth.”

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If the past is confusing, so is the present. We were browsing through some Bendigo population data on the Population Australia website and began wondering.

It said Bendigo’s present population of about 120,000 made us the “the largest inland city in Australia and the 4th most populated city in Victoria.” Sounds about right. Even though it might be contested by Ballarat and perhaps Albury-Wodonga.

But it’s some other data which has us wondering. Our top five ancestries were: England, India, New Zealand, Burma and Thailand. The top five languages other than English spoken here were: Mandarin, Italian, Mandarin, Arabic and French. (Yep, Mandarin was so popular, it was listed twice.)

In Bendigo, 38.1 per cent of people are married, 41.6 per cent have never married, 10.4 per cent per cent are divorced and 3.8 per cent are separated. Apparently, the other 6.20 per cent are confused.