It’s not Christmas time in Adelaide until you can eat a double-smoked turkey breast sandwich with apricot and bacon stuffing at your desk.

And so, once again, we’ve come to that time of year, beloved or dreaded depending upon your inclination towards the festive works of Michael Bublé and Ella Fitzgerald. It’s Christmas season.

By this point in December, the holidays are so close you can almost taste the mid-morning Champagne served at your aunt and uncle’s Christmas lunch (and feel the resultant late-afternoon headache).

Here at the CityMag office, Christmas season doesn’t feel like it’s truly begun until we’re able to bring some of the festive spirit to our desk in sandwich form.

And hark, that time at last has come, as Hello Sarnie launches its annual Christmas sarnie.

According to the business’ co-founder Andrew Pearce, we’re not alone in our love for the sandwich and all the cheer and good tidings it signifies.

“When we start talking about it… even the staff themselves, that mindset, they’re like, ‘We’ve only got two weeks to go. It’s the end of the year and we can all have this well-deserved break,’” Andrew says.

“It does create this sort of buzz within the stores, the Christmas posters go up, and people definitely take a deep breath and a sigh – with what the year has been as well.”

The sandwich first launched at Hello Sarnie’s Pirie Street store in its first year of operation, in 2015.

There have been minor tweaks made to the recipe each year, but the fundamentals remain the same: thinly sliced, double-smoked turkey breast, cranberry sauce, and an apricot and bacon stuffing turned into a crumb.

Add some Hello Sarnie house mayo, a layer of baby spinach and a couple of slices of dark rye, and you’ve got a proper Christmas lunch available to you every day of the week.

“You don’t have to say the word Christmas and people go ‘Christmas dinner’ straight away,” Andrew says.

“As soon as you bite into it, I hope the consumer feels that it brings a sense of Christmas now to them, which to 99.9 per cent of people is joy and happiness and all of those fond things that we think of with Christmas.”

Despite its popularity, the sandwich is not a money spinner for the business, as it’s relatively costly to produce.

It might have been a wise choice to skip the Christmas sandwich for 2020, given the hardship the hospitality industry has endured since March, but it seemed to Andrew more important than ever to demonstrate a giving spirit.

“Mike (Kendall-Smith, co-owner) and I spoke about, ‘Are we going to do the Christmas sarnie this year?’ Of course. Why wouldn’t we?” Andrew says.

“There needs to be some sense of normality in the day-to-day trade. Yes, city numbers are considerably low at the moment, but why not?”

Hello Sarnie’s Christmas sandwich is available now through to the end of the year. Have a very merry lunch break.