I enjoy making barely useful things, like my WiFi Information Station, and I love Christmas. So a permanent decoration showing the number of days until Christmas is right up my alley. I will detail the design process for anyone wanting to build this themselves.

The intention of the project is to have a real time clock will keep track of how many days there are until Christmas. A small screen will be the focal point and will load an image showing the current number of days until Christmas. 

To make this easy to recreate, the design will include an Arduino Mega with a plug-in 3.5" TFT display. The display includes an SD card port where each individual number will be stored to be pulled up as needed. The microcontroller will use the RTC to determine how many days there are until Christmas, and based on that will display the correct number on the screen. It will all be enclosed in a 3D printed enclosure and decorated.