I was walking up Degraw Street on the afternoon of September 29, 2025, when I happened across an unexpected seasonal decoration: An inflatable snowman with a Christmas countdown clock.
To be sure, this is not the first time I have documented an inflatable snowman with a Christmas countdown clock in Brooklyn. Back on December 22, 2023, I published an article about an inflatable snowman next to a Christmas countdown clock (held up by two plastic snowmen) also in Carroll Gardens, but near the Carroll Gardens–Red Hook border instead of the Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill border. Of course, the operative word there is December. The Christmas countdown clock pictured supra was seen in September.
(Note: This photo is somewhere in the neighborhood of two blocks away from a residence just off Degraw where I have photographed many inflatable decorations, most recently a back-to-school gnome.)
The Christmas countdown clock is difficult to see in the picture because the red LED lights did not agree with my Google Pixel 6a camera. But if you look closely—perhaps with the aid of your zoom function—you will see that the number on the clock is 86. Sure enough, September 29, 2025 is 86 days shy of Christmas 2025. The clock was accurate!
The two-digit Christmas countdown clock should work up to 99 days to Christmas. But just because it can go up 99 days before Christmas does not explain why one would begin the Christmas countdown so early. I will note that I found it odd when I saw Halloween decorations in Brooklyn Heights as early as September 12. To be sure, I have documented late Christmas decorations in the form of two very dry Christmas trees seen in the spring in Brooklyn Heights and in Williamsburg, but never such an early Christmas decoration.
Unlike some cases wherein I raise questions and do not answer them, I believe I have an answer to why one brownstone in Carroll Gardens is starting Christmas while its neighbors are haphazardly throwing up plastic skeletons and soon-to-be-rotting pumpkins. A website called From Way Downtown re-printed a 1988 article from Street & Smith’s Pro Basketball Magazine titled Golden State: That Championship Season, 1975. The 1988 article is, as the name suggests, a look back at the 1974-75 NBA Champion Golden State Warriors (that team made a cameo appearance in my statistical survey of NBA champions). The article includes a quote from Dick Vertlieb, who was the General Manager of the 74-75 Warriors, about Clifford Ray, the starting center on that championship team.
I’ll tell you what was typical of [his] personality. He had a Christmas tree up in his house 12 months a year because he figured people were happiest at Christmas time, so why not be happy all the time?
Dick Vertleib on Clifford Ray
I imagine that Mr. Ray, who now counts among his career accomplishments being the star of the 2023 children’s book Big Clifford Ray Saves the Day, which chronicles the story of how he used his long arms to save the life of a dolphin in 1978, would approve of the very early Christmas countdown snowman. In the spirit of his merry Christmas wisdom, may I suggest a 365-day Christmas countdown snowman?
