Issuers might want to brush up on their XBRL over the holidays. The Securities and Exchange Commission appears poised to finalize its proposed rule to mandate the use of interactive data, according to its chairman.

SEC officials have suggested for months that the final rule to require the use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language, proposed back in May, is still forthcoming. Under the original proposal, the largest 500 public companies in the United States would start submitting financial reports using XBRL in 2009, other large filers would follow in 2010, and all remaining companies would join in in 2011.

In mid-November, SEC Chief Accountant Conrad Hewitt told attendees at a financial reporting conference that the issuance of the adopting release “may occur before the end of the year.” There’s been no word on whether the proposed adoption timetable has changed.

The latest mention of the XBRL rule came in a Dec. 8 speech by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox to members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

While his remarks focused primarily on the SEC study of mark-to-market accounting and International Financial Reporting Standards, Cox noted that, “In the same way that IFRS might someday soon make financial statements understandable to investors anywhere on earth, the 30 different spoken languages that will someday soon be embedded in XBRL data tags attached to public company financial statements could let any investor read an IFRS or U.S. GAAP financial statement from any country in his or her own native language.”

Cox said that objective “will be significantly advanced if, as expected, the Commission later this month finalizes our proposed rule to provide investors with all public company financial reports in an interactive data format.”

An SEC spokesman said the Commission had no comment beyond the Chairman’s remarks.

Stay tuned.