We did ours 3 months before the first Christmas we arrived. The issue I found was with finding a nice cool place to keep it. It gets warm inside where we are and these cakes don't keep as well and as long as they do in the UK. A bit of testing has determined that 2 months in advance works well for us, with regular booze feeding.

I have 5 days starting Xmas day - I'd rather be nights too. Hopefullly though, apart from a couple of days at the start of the month, that will be the only time I'm working in December so lots of time to spend with my grandson

And my daughter of course