I’m a big fan of Daylight Savings Time …
… and if you’re not, I’d wager it’s because you’re a morning person – whereas I’m a nightowl, and have been since early childhood. Circadian rhythms and all that.
Or, perhaps you have a job that dictates that you get up very very early even if you’re not naturally a morning person.
Or, perhaps you live in an area of the country where the night/day seasonal changes aren’t so dramatic. I live in a part of the country where they are very dramatic indeed, and in winter the darkness comes extremely early. Therefore what I’d like to see is permanent Daylight Savings Time. I have little doubt that many of you will find that idea abominable.
Here’s an article on the history of the practice.
In high latitudes, wouldn’t permanent Daylight Savings just make for exaggerated darkness during alternate 6-month seasons?
I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about the actual configuration of the clock vs the sun. But I ***hate*** the abrupt transition, especially the one happening tonight. It’s precisely because I’m *not* a morning person. All those years of working, having to wake up earlier than my body wanted to, dragging myself out of bed, getting out the door…and then once a year on a spring morning you have to suddenly do it an hour earlier. It takes me a week to get used to it. Even though I don’t have to get up at any particular time now, I still don’t like it. And the “fall back” six months later doesn’t make up for it.
DST was made permanent at one time, I think during the Carter administration. Iirc a lot of people objected because it made sunrise so late, so that children were leaving for school in the dark.
Mac:
Yes, my plan would eliminate the transition – but would be hard on people getting up early in the morning.
I have a fix for the schoolkids though – delay the start of school one hour. There’s research that indicates that would be good for the kids anyway since many function better a bit later in the morning.
Insufficiently Sensitive:
The number of hours of daylight remain the same. It’s the clock that shifts. Therefore, with my plan, there would be less daylight for early morning people and more daylight in the afternoon, during all seasons including winter.
I don’t approve of a blanket move of the clock. I’d prefer to put half the time zones on permanent standard time and half on permanent daylight time. That way, the continental United States becomes two time zones, Western and Eastern, two hours apart.
I did experience the year of daylight savings time in the 1970’s; I was not a fan of going to school when it was pitch dark. But I’ll put up with it if we get rid of two time zones.
When I was living in CT I really liked DST, still do but it’s not as big of a change here in FL.
My solution for you Neo which I came up with while dealing with the sun going down at 330 in the winter. was for all of New England to move to the Atlantic timezone. Being on the extreme eastern side of the east time zone robs NE of almost an hour compared to Ohio or Georgia
Some of us don’t like daylight time because it’s silly to change all the clocks in the nation twice a year instead of just keeping an individual schedule that matches individual daylight preferences.
It does very little for those in the most northern and most southern latitudes. In my case, the shortest day has about eight hours of daylight, not worth moving around, and the longest day has about 15, again not worth moving around. In Arizona, where they don’t bother with daylight time, they go from about 11 to about 13 hours of daylight, and would get no benefit.
So once you account for all those who live in latitudes where it makes no sense, and all those in occupations where the daylight hours are irrelevant, and all those in occupations that are tied to sun time regardless of what the clock says, and all the retired people who can have any schedule they want, why are we doing this silly dance twice a year?
The trains have to stop running for an hour when the clocks are set back. And when the clocks are set forward, they have to drive extra fast for a while to get caught back up. What a waste.
Maybe we should all set our clocks ten minutes ahead so no one in the country will ever be late again!
China has an interesting approach: the whole country is one giant timezone (instead of 5) set to Beijing’s time, and if people in Xinjiang and Tibet and Heilongjiang don’t find it convenient, they just don’t care.
Niketas:
My suggestion involves no clock-changing back and forth.
I’m fine with your suggestion, neo. I’d prefer to stay “fallen behind,” but as long as we stop changing twice a year I’m fine with spring forward to accomplish it.
I don’t understand the arguments people make for sticking with changing the clocks because of some, clock related reason. Just change the time of day you do whatever you do. As you wrote, school districts can start school whenever they want, and the vast majority start too early. Extreme northern school districts in the U.S. probably should change the time school begins based on the season.
I grew up in Indiana which, at the time, didn’t do DST (it does now). I never heard the expression “spring forward fall back” until I was an adult. All I knew was that twice a year, all the TV shows that I liked to watch shifted forward or back by an hour.
Other than that minor inconvenience, we functioned just fine using the same time standard all year long.
I remember being annoyed because at certain times of the year, we couldn’t stay up to watch the Wonderful World of Disney movies because they ended after our bedtime.
Because I grew up without it, I HATE having to change clocks twice a year. Sorry for yelling, but I’m that adamant about it.
I don’t care whether we go to permanent standard or permanent daylight savings, just pick one and stick with it. Changing clocks around is just stupid.
I don’t so much object to the change, what I object to is the when. I’ve got two part Jack Russell terriers. I have to get up early. And there’s no fenced in yard. Losing that hour of sleep does hurt.
I suggest going from 3:59 to 5 pm on the Friday. And yes, hourly workers get paid for that hour.
Just to be precise, it’s Daylight Saving Time, no “s”.
I don’t mind the twice yearly change, it’s the best solution for those in the middle and upper latitudes. Otherwise you get very late sunrises in winter and a waste of daylight in the very early morning in the spring and summer. But I do think the second Sunday in March is way too early. The first Sunday in April is more reasonable. I never understood why an hour’s change would be so problematic, given the much greater changes via jet travel that people survive.
It was during the Nixon administration that DST started in January 1974, supposedly to save energy. It was not popular and given up after that dark morning winter.
Various countries do weird things with time zones. China is on one time zone for the entire country, centered around the wealthier, more populated east. That means very late sunrises and sunsets in the west year round.
Western Europe is on one time zone, which means that Spain, France, and the Benelux countries, which should be on the same time zone as the UK, essentially has DST in the winter and double DST in the spring-summer-half of fall.
Time zones? More and more, what makes me happy is having no opinion. As long as I have electricity, I can read the news. Yes, that makes no sense. I live at the far northwestern edge of the eastern time zone. Has that affected my point of view? Am I a victim of time zone determinism? Yes, I AM A VICTIM. Finally.
A matter of relative unimportance for me.
I suspect it has more benefit for those who live on the eastern side of their time zone. I have lived in SW Ohio and central Indiana, and I never did see much benefit to it.
The other reason for it, supposedly, was to save energy. In the days of incandescent light bulbs, that might have made some sense. But now that a 12 watt LED bulb can give you as much light as a 75 watt incandescent bulb, that’s not that much of a savings.
I do know that a lot of rural people hate it. It’s one thing to tell people to change their clocks; try that with chickens, dairy cows, or other livestock!
‘Tis the season once again!
Daylight Saving – Movie Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8MGewKxO0w
Early or late, I don’t care. I just want it to stop one way or the other and stay there.
I’m a morning person, but I’m with you on making Daylight Saving Time permanent.
I grew up in Indiana like Sailorcurt and when I moved away, it took years to get it straight. Fall back, fall forward… Spring ahead, spring back… Eh. Either made sense to me.
Family still live there and now that it IS on Daylight Saving Time, they hate it. Fireworks are around ten pm for the 4th of July. I think changing to the Central Time Zone would make sense for the state. (The Region is on Central Time, I think )
I was just on my phone reading this when it went from 1:59 to 3:00. Sigh. I really hate “springng forward.”
The “fall back” is nice with the extra hour of sleep.
I remember in college, bars closed at 2:00 and in the fall, when the clock changed, we’d try to talk them into staying open that extra hour. It never worked, however. (In my younger days, I was a night owl.)
Well, the dogs will be happy with the time change. They will think they’re getting fed an hour earlier. They don’t do so great in the fall — we’re obviously torturing them by withholding food an extra hour.
I live in AZ, so we (see note) stay on Standard time. The concept of DST is a philosophical issue, and I have no opinion, one way or the other.
Practically, for me the major effect is that my TV viewing shifts twice a year. The network news shows, for instance, are on MST, then on PDT.
Note: The Navajo Nation (about 15-20% of the area of the state) follows the rest of the country and goes on Daylight time, even though about 60% of the reservation is within Arizona. The Hopi reservation, completely surrounded by Navajo land follows Arizona and stays on Standard time.
I see in my bookmarks that this topic comes back around from time to time.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/03/09/permanent-daylight-saving-time/#comment-2483432
The URL gives me a “Page not found” which is not surprising.
My comment back then was “Let’s call the whole thing off.”
However, I would be happy with Standard or Daylight, so long as we quit changing!
If that’s not possible, maybe we should do the change-over on Sunday Night and make the following Monday a national holiday for schools and businesses, not just federal workers.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/398380882_3519755954905498_477924486533219712_n.png
There doesn’t seem to be a strong consensus on any of the options.
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/08/are-we-ready-to-stop-changing-our-clocks-n4937715
I’ll second Marisa’s comment. Moving the shift to and from DST two weeks earlier and two weeks later was another one of George W Bush’s many bad ideas. It just reinforces the issue with dark mornings.
The only issue I see with permanent DST is that it would need to be a national policy with no local exceptions, which we’ve allowed for the DST switch, and that it would probably eventually encourage another time zone switch (though likely long after any of us would remain). I’ve read people have a natural 25-hour circadian cycle so we always want to stay up a little later in the evening.
The idea of collapsing to two time zones from four is an interesting one.
What if we split the difference? As long as we’re manipulating the #@%& clocks for our pleasure, jump forward 30 minutes and lock it in place. It would put us in conflict with the on-the-hour rest of the world, but so what? If it stops the whining it would be worth it.
I’m with you Neo. No change. Even with it, I spent at least 6 weeks (similar to your latitude, 45 degrees N), walking to my school bus stop in the dark.
Just caught the headline saying that the White House has taken it under review.
DST was made permanent at one time, I think during the Carter administration.
==
It was 1973-74. Dark outside past 9:00 am in our latitude. There was a boom in sales of reflector tape and bright orange armbands for kids’ jackets.
==
Changing the clocks is a minor nuisance. Never saw much benefit from so doing. ===
==
There are abiding and important nuisances. Some of them are hardly discussed. Some are discussed, but it’s all spin-those-wheels.
==
A note on the 1973-74 event. It was part of a set of idiot measures that were enacted by the Congress and the President to ‘save energy’. This was one of the more ineffectual ones. There were serious policies they might have adopted, but these would have offended vested interests or abraded public sensibilities, so they were not done. Richard Nixon was a lawyer, as was every member of the Congressional leadership. The appointed policy-makers were a mix of lawyers and businessmen, with George Schulz the only economist.
All those who want to live on permanent daylight time are in luck: they can, whenever they wish, all they have to do is get up and go to bed one hour later. They can even, if they wish, set their own clocks forward one hour. Or even two! They don’t need the government to make a proclamation to give them permission, we are a free people.
And those who do not wish to be late for appointments can get ready ten minutes earlier, or they can set their clocks forward ten minutes. We’re free to do that, or not.
If you long for permanent daylight time, but find the notion of setting your own clock forward strangely unsatisfying, you might unpack your ideas a little, and figure out why it’s important to you to make everyone else go along with you, instead of just you doing your thing…
A curiously relevant quote from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich:
the problem with that, is everyone else is on the other clock, and will act accordingly
@miguel:the problem with that, is everyone else is on the other clock, and will act accordingly
There are those who think it’s a problem when others won’t do as they do, sure. “Soviet power” can sort that out: make us call a deer a horse, make us call a man a woman, and make us call noon one o’ clock…