For many of us, December is the last month to get rid of those bad habits you don’t want to take into the new year.

Whether it’s smoking or drinking too much, or just a reliance on pizza to get you through the weekend (just me?), we love to leave it all behind in December, go clean for a few months and then slowly slip back into those habits once the shine of the new year has worn off.

Apparently, that isn’t all we like to leave behind in December…

Data analysed from Facebook messages show the silly season is the most popular time to end things with your partner.

More specifically, December 11 is the day the majority of couples choose to end things.

Credit: Alamy

Reasons for the break vary from not wanting to face the holiday period with someone you’re just not that into, to not wanting to introduce a partner to your friends and family over Christmas.

I absolutely love the idea of making it all the way to Dec 11 and then being like ‘soz mate, Grandma is not going to be into you’.

Psychologist Dr Dorree Lynn told ABC News: “If you’re not sure, particularly if you haven’t been dating for several years, a lot of people have issues about gift-giving and how intimate the gift-giving is.

“They get frightened because they don’t want to put pressure on the other person, but on the other hand they don’t want to feel like a fool giving something and not getting anything back.”

This is actually even better – imagine wandering around Westfield looking for a gift for your significant other and then just being like ‘screw it, we should just break up’.

Other research shows 71 per cent of women and 56 per cent of men would rather break up with a partner they’re not super keen on than take them to meet the family at Christmas.

While some say breakups in December should be done before the 6th or else it’s too close to the holidays and can be considered ‘harsh’.

I would think breaking up with a partner to get out of introducing them to your family is harsh no matter how you slice it, but you do you.

According to the data, if you make it past the 11th you’re good to go. Until the new year at least.

To be honest, I can barely remember what day it is between Christmas and New Year so I can see why people aren’t making serious life decisions during that time.

Other than Dec 11, the next peak time to break up with a partner is mid-March, which is just about when we all drop our New Year’s resolutions. Maybe there’s a correlation there…