Despite a nasty cold this Christmas, I am grateful for the pause to the frenzied pace of life. One time a year, my routines halt — stores close, work slows and news sleeps. Winter break is like the iconic Swiss Railway clock, which stops just before it reaches the full minute (at about 58.5 seconds), pauses briefly and jumps forward. There is clever engineering behind the brief pause before the jump: It ensures that the train clocks are kept in sync.

Similarly, Christmas is a brief pause in my life when I can disconnect from routine, reflect on the past year and jump forward eagerly into the new year.

The Swiss Railway clock metaphor goes a bit deeper. The clock design is meant to fix inaccuracies caused by electric clock movements (which due to AC current, have small imprecisions). At the Swiss railway stations, there are multiple secondary clocks with the famous 58.5s pause. At this pause, the secondary clocks await a signal from the master clock, which ensures they all jump to the next minute at the same time. The master clock is more precise.

Looking at the new year, I wonder, what master clock do I synchronize to? I would hope God, and indeed, Christmas is a time of deep religious reflection. But as the year goes on, the clock falls out of sync, pulled by the currents of work, politics and other distractions.

In folklore, the witching hour is the deepest part of night when supernatural events happen. It is when terrifying demons and witches practice their magic, in children’s fables at least.

But I believe even fairy tales have logical origins. The witching hour is said to occur around 3am, give or take a few hours. This is also when “sleep maintenance” insomniacs wake up, unable to fall asleep again. I think historically, there would be little to see or hear around 3am. Your senses are heightened, so the slightest noise or light can have a sinister undertone. A creaking floor, or a demonic visitor? The moon’s reflection, or a wandering shapeshifter? According to some, the witching hour is when our mind is most creative. Maybe some of those creative insomniacs liked to write fairy tales?

The other logic of the witching hour is that sleep has long been a metaphor for death. In The Sleeper, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe (a famous insomniac himself) describes a beautiful woman’s death:

A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not for the world awake.
All beauty sleeps! — and, lo! where lies 
With casement open to the skies, 
Irene with her destinies!

Therefore, maybe the witching hour insomniacs were reminded of death when they saw their peacefully sleeping housemates. Another reason to introduce a mystical element to being awake at that time.