It's Time to Change the Clocks

Twice per year we are told to change our clocks – to spring ahead in the spring, to fall back in the autumn.  Occasionally, they change the date on which we are to do this, but it has become pretty common place to do it the first Sunday morning (2:00 am) after Halloween and the second weekend of March.

Trouble is, I don’t know anyone who likes to change the clocks.  Not one person can I name who gets excited about losing an hour of sleep in the spring, although most of us like the extra hour in the fall.  Still, if you asked us if we like changing the clocks, our answer would be “No.”

I recall when Florida first started having daylight saving time.  The radio announcers were proclaiming it to be a good thing, adding an hour of sunlight for farmers and helping school children have more time to work in the fields after school.  I was a college student living at home on the farm and I don’t recall being excited about an extra hour to work in the fields and less time for homework!  My dad still got up at sunrise and went to bed shortly after dark, so the change of time had zero effect on him as a farmer.  Light was light and dark was dark, and most jobs had to be done in the daylight hours. 

Wikipedia tells me the proposal for Daylight Saving Time was first made in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin.  He calculated considerable savings to families in the use of candles.  What family today uses candles to light their home?  Not one flickering candle is used for light in most of America unless our electricity is out, and that’s not common.

The idea resurfaced during World War I, with Germany actually adopting it.  Europe followed. They were trying to conserve energy.  Franklin Roosevelt instituted daylight saving time in the United States in 1942, making it year-round.  It lasted until 1945.  It returned in 1966 with the passage of the Uniform Time Act. 

So what’s the reason now for continuing changing the time twice per year?  Government cites it as “energy savings.”  Is there documentation that this really occurs?  I have not researched it and probably don’t care enough about the issue to do so, but I’m a skeptic.

People often talk about school children having to be at bus stops in the dark and go home from school in the dark.  That’s true.  It happens.  With or without changing the time it happens.  And we have cheap lights available now to light those bus stops and make them safer for the children.  Most schools keep the lights on in the classrooms whether or not they are needed, so I’m a skeptic of energy savings there too.

Nonetheless, I change my clocks as asked.  You did too.  I’ve never learned to like it, and doubt I ever do.  The consequences of not doing it are worse than of doing it, so I obediently follow along.  But you can’t make me like it.