Father Christmas may not be real, but Father Time is very real.  And he’s tinkering with your clocks!

The U.S. Naval Observatory, keeper of the Pentagon’s master clock, said it will add an extra second on Wednesday in coordination with the world’s atomic clocks at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.

That corresponds to 6:59:59 p.m. EST (for those of us on the East Coast), when an extra second will tick by — the 24th to be added to UTC since 1972, when the practice began.   So they’ve added almost half a minute of time since this crazy practice has started!    1.21 Gigawatts?!?!???  GREAT SCOTT!!!!!

Read more about it here.