Countdown to Christmas

Countdown to Christmas is a simple-to-use desktop gadget compatible with Windows Vista and 7, initially designed to count down time until the Christmas. It synchronizes to the computer clock.

Count down time to important events

However, it implements options for changing this date to anything you want. This way, it can be asked to keep track of time remaining until another important event, such as birthday, vacation starting date, meeting, or appointment.
It gets seamlessly integrated with the operating system at setup. Because this is an old tool, Countdown to Christmas is set by default to count time until the Christmas of 2007.

Set the date, time, title and color

By accessing the settings panel, you can pick another month, day and year (ranging from 2007 to 2020), along with the hour and minute (12-clock format). Plus, you can enter another name or description for the event, as well as choose another skin color.
If the specified time has already passed, the timers are automatically reset to 0. The program doesn't have a notification system to let you know time's up, such as audio or visual cues. Unfortunately, it doesn't support multiple timers, in order to keep track of different upcoming events at the same time.

Evaluation and conclusion

Although it hasn't been updated for a long time, it remained stable throughout its runtime in our tests, without causing the OS to hang, crash or display error dialogs. It used a low amount of CPU and RAM, so it didn't hog system resources.
The project is no longer in development. Nevertheless, you can use Countdown to Christmas if you're looking for a simple method to monitor time remaining until Christmas or any other important event, as long as you use Windows 7 or Vista.