This coming weekend is one with which I have a love/hate relationship.
Daylight savings time comes to an end this Sunday morning.
I love it because it means that I get an extra hour of sleep (who am I kidding, I’m probably going to waste that hour watching a Netflix documentary). That extra hour, if used wisely, comes very much in handy if I have a late-night Sinatra gig that Saturday night, which is usually the case.
It also signifies that fall is in full swing. While I love the warmer weather, there’s always something about the crispness of autumn that makes me sentimental for my childhood.
As much as I relish the extra hour, I also despise it.
The end of daylight savings time means that it is going to start again at the end of winter. I lose the hour that I had gained. I lose the sleep. Mornings shift back into darkness. I spend that Sunday in a bit of a daze, with the grogginess seeping into Monday, as well.
Twice a year, I have to wrap my head around the concept, too. “If we’re going back an hour, what does that mean?” I ask myself. “Will it get darker later or earlier?” I can never remember.
And if you have young children and are making a concerted effort to maintain a steady bedtime schedule, you know the struggle DST forces upon you twice a year. The shift can have effects that linger for weeks, resulting in overtired and cranky kids who resist any adaptation to their routine. The complaint is justifiably made biannually by my wife.
This back and forth each year has grown tiresome. I’m in my 35th trip around the sun, and I still haven’t been given a reasonable explanation as to why the ritual of DST has continued well into the 21st century.
Growing up, I’m sure we were all told the same thing: daylight savings was implemented so that farmers before electricity could continue harvesting during the early morning hours as we plunged deeper into fall.
It turns out this reasoning is only a myth, with many farmers historically arguing that their activities are more synchronized to the natural rhythm of the sunrise than what the clock says.
In the United States and other industrialized countries, DST was implemented largely to maintain a sense of normalcy in accordance with the standard 9 to 5 workday. Arguments were also made that DST helped to conserve energy, be it whale oil, coal, or electricity, especially during wartime efforts. The cost and energy savings have never been proven, though.
The only halfway decent explanation for why DST still exists that I’ve heard is that it gives children light enough to walk to their school or bus stop so that drivers can easily see them and avoid striking them with their cars.
I reject this line of thinking in the year 2025. Every morning, I do my best to leave for work before the local school bus rounds my house to pick up the neighborhood kids. If I lag, I’m guaranteed to arrive at work 10-15 minutes later than I would have if I had left ahead of the bus. I don’t know what happened, but in the past decade, there must have been a policy change to where buses stop in front of each and every child’s house to pick them up, instead of having every child within a half-mile radius meet at a predetermined location to be herded on board.
The other reason that I reject out of hand is SAD. Seasonal affective disorder. Weather-induced depression. When did this horse manure start? Perhaps if people began waking up at a reasonable hour instead of wasting potentially the most productive hours of their day by sleeping in until 10 am, they wouldn’t feel so terrible about themselves.
“But Taylor, if we get rid of daylight savings the sun would rise at 4 o’clock in the morning during the summer!”
So what?! Wake the f*** up! Get s*** done! Go for a walk! Read!
Wanna sleep in? Get some blackout shades for your windows or move into the basement. I’m sure some of you lazy bums are already living below mom and dad already, anyway.
Early in the year, President Trump had toyed with the idea of getting rid of DST once and for all. But he kicked the can by declaring it a 50/50 issue, meaning that he would score as many political points as he would lose.
I would advise President Trump to reconsider. And if he does decide to eliminate DST, he should do it just before it begins again next year.
MAGA and pink-haired weirdos alike can all appreciate not losing another hour of sleep.