With Christmas right around the corner, more than a few gamers have been waiting for Valve's annual Steam winter sale. It's not official just yet, but it certainly looks like we may know when you'll need to have your wallet ready to score some of the biggest discounts in gaming.

According to a screen shot taken from PayPal's site by a member of the gaming forum NeoGAF, the Steam winter sale will begin on Dec. 22. It doesn't mention an end date, but the sale typically lasts for around a week or so.

It's not a whole lot to go on. We still don't know what games will go on sale or how the sale will be structured, but we can look at some of Valve's previous sales to get an idea.

Steam's last sale took more than a few people by surprise when the website held a Black Friday "Exploration" sale that discounted thousands of games. Unlike previous sales, no mini-games, card collecting or community votes were featured. It's currently unknown if this year's winter sale will have the regular flash deals and community-selected sales that gamers who use the service have become accustomed to. Valve seems to try and mix things up every year, so who knows what form this year's sale will take.

Valve recently discussed new security measures taken to protect users' Steam accounts, which becomes even more important over the holidays as people receive Steam gift cards and spend hundreds of dollars on new games. The company revealed that around 77,000 accounts are compromised every month in a recent blog post, despite security measures like two-step authentication. Valve is now enforcing new trading rules to help cut down on the number of hacked accounts. You can read more about that here.

While you're waiting for the sale to start, you can get in the mood with the video below: