Christmas eve came on apace, one day it was at hand, the next it was here. When first it had been talked of at table⁠—to Hans Castorp’s great surprise⁠—it had been yet a good six weeks away, as much time as his original term up here, plus the three weeks in bed. But those first six weeks, as he thought of them in retrospect, seemed a very long time, while the six just passed had been insignificant. His fellow-guests were right to make light of them. Six weeks, why, that was not so many as the week had days; little indeed, when one considered what a small affair a week was, from Monday to Sunday and then Monday again. One needed only to see how valueless the next smaller time-unit was to realize that not much could come even of a whole row of them put together. Rather the total effect was to intensify the process of contraction, shrinkage, blurring, and effacement. What was one day, taken for instance from the moment one sat down to the midday meal to the same moment four-and-twenty hours afterwards? It was, to be sure, four-and-twenty hours⁠—but equally it was the simple sum of nothings. Or take an hour spent in the rest-cure, at the dinnertable, or on the daily walk⁠—and these ways of employing the time-unit practically exhausted its possibilities⁠—what was an hour? Again, nothing.