Christmas Countdown: How to Make the Wait the Best Part of the Season Nobody counts down to a dentist appointment. We count down to things we want to arrive, and the counting itself turns out to be half the pleasure. That is the quiet logic behind every Christmas countdown ever made — a chalk mark on a door, a chocolate calendar on the kitchen wall, a ticking widget on a phone screen. The countdown is not just a way of measuring the wait. It is a way of enjoying it. This guide covers where the Christmas countdown came from, why it works on us so reliably, the different formats worth trying, and how to build one your household will actually stick with past the first week of December. Where the Christmas countdown began The habit is older than the products that now sell it. In the mid-1800s, German Protestant families marked the days to Christmas by chalking lines on a door or a board, or by lighting a candle each evening — simple, homemade, and repeated annually because it ga...