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Health & Fitness

The Countdown Clock Town

In the days leading towards Christmas, don't you feel just a little different?

In the evening, parents walking down Second Street are surprised to find out their young urchins have been led astray. The Christmas countdown clock is in the hardware store window. It counts not just the days but the hours and minutes until Christmas Day. It hangs above the annual window display of the miniature town in winter, complete with shops, a train that evidently never lets anyone on or off, a frozen lake with Christmas revellers, an aerial tram with moving little gondolas for the tiny townsfolk to take in the same sights we see and a winter carnival with moving rides. The little ones are transfixed by this tiny town and its goings on and parents must patiently wait until every nook and cranny have been ogled and accounted for.

Down the street, in the post office, the line of would-be gift-shippers may extend out the door. But there don't seem to be too many angry mutterings or harrumphings. People recognize that "it's the season" and patiently wait or talk amiably with their fellow queue-lings. I'm old enough to know its not just my imagination that people seem friendlier as the countdown clock ticks away. People seem to be letting down their guard, acquiescing a bit, smiling more. It is as if there is an unspoken agreement that while the clock ticks it is okay to be nice to strangers and to let them be nice to you.
 
And of course, there are the lights and decorations too. The houses seem more inviting, the neighborhoods magically transformed, safer, somehow. In these, the coldest, darkest days of the year it's like we get a pass. We get a chance to set aside the angst of our confounding world for a time and live with the world as a child might see it, full of, if not goodness, than maybe a sort of mysterious hopefulness.

For a brief time, we look and feel a lot like that perfect little countdown clock town. No matter what beliefs you may or may not share about the holidays, I think its okay to let these better versions of ourselves shine for a little bit.

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