Let's face it.

standing on the precipice of another new year can be daunting.

It's this time when we are forced to take stock of

all the stuff that has happened in our lives and in the world. We think about all the

things we hope to gain in the new year and all the things that maybe didn't happen in the last,

all of this can be a lot. And on top of that, a ticking clock on New Year's Eve can add a lot of pressure.

It might surprise you that Americans did not actually start to embrace the countdown

widely until about the 1970s.

We used to celebrate New Year's day.

You woke up on January 1st, you said,

happy new year, but by the 20th century,

the clock and midnight become especially important.

Alexis McCrossen is a history professor at Southern Methodist University and she says there may be some

grimmer reasons why the idea of a countdown was not always associated with

celebration. In the 1950s there were atomic bomb tests and the countdown to the

dropping of the bomb and then to its detonation was televised.

Three two, one, zero.

But later on, countdowns would have more positive connotations, you know,

counting down to the Apollo Moon missions or counting down the top 40 pop hits.

And finally in the 70s, they caught on as a way to ring out the old and ring in the new

five four three two one and a happy 1979.

And yet McCrossin says that counting down to the new year,

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