Why Daylight Savings? Just Because. (and some links)

On Monday morning we’re all going to be in somewhat of a stupor.  Why?  Because people decided to screw around with time for no good reason.  Yes, some busybody had a down moment and got all nervous because they weren’t accomplishing something, so they decided that we needed to adjust time in order to accomplish more.  This kind of stuff happens in congress a lot.

It all started before the days of electricity, when candles were used for lighting.  The idea being, that by adding daylight hours to the end of the day, people would use less candle wax.  The Yankee Candle Company beat this idea back.  I believe the original quote was something like.  “This is obviously a war on candles, and our business in particular.  We have no idea why you would want to deprive the public of an extra hour of their homes smelling like a delicious macintosh apple, or a fresh baked pumpkin pie, or a field of lavender, or any other of our 137 scents.  NEW AROMAS AVAILABLE THIS FALL!”

In 1916 Germany became the first country to officially adopt the 1 hour daylight saving time.  They decided that it would help save them fuel for what they were trying accomplish at the time.  CONQUERING THE WORLD.  Luckily for the rest of us, it made no difference.

Because of WWI, Woodrow Wilson decided to bring the idea to the United States in 1918.  That lasted a whole seven months.  It is a popular myth that farmers were the reason for the time change, but they were actually instrumental in getting the law overturned.  They hated the way it messed up their schedule.  Their dissent, combined with the Great Schoolchildren’s Riot of 1918 (not a fact), made congress bow to the will of the people, and we lived without national time fiddling until the next time Germany decided that they wanted to CONQUER THE WORLD.

Even though there were no national daylight saving laws when it wasn’t war time, that didn’t stop municipalities from mercilessly toying with the clock.  When local politicians weren’t honoring other politicians with statues or getting involved in scandals, they were using their god complexes to tinker with time itself.  As History.com points out, “In 1965 there were 23 different pairs of start and end dates (for daylight saving time) in Iowa alone.”  In 1966 congress passed the Uniform Time Act.  This officially enacted DST and gave it an official start and end date.  That’s how we all got stuck with it.

The purpose of the whole fiasco is to save on energy.  Assuming we lazy people will refuse to get up early to take advantage of the extra morning sunlight, we are artificially being given more daylight at the end of the day.  This way we will use less energy lighting our homes and be able to get more done in the daylight hours.  However, recent studies by UCSB and the California Energy Commission have shown that it really has little to no influence on energy consumption, and people probably use more gasoline in the pursuit of leisure activities because of the extra sunlight.

SUMMARY:  Like many laws and rules, this is in place to make your life more complicated.  Everyone dislikes it, especially farmers and teachers.  I have the suspicion that if a group of us got together and went to congress to say, “Hey, why are we still doing this?”, the answer would be, “Because we said so. Now go to your room.”

LINKS

• The Sports Illustrated 100 Greatest Moments in Sports History is worth a look.
• The soldiers from WWII’s “Ghost Army” are up for a Congressional Gold Medal.  It’s a pretty interesting story.
• This penguin travels an unbelievable distance every year to visit the man who saved his life.
• I’m not saying that this avocado chimichurri bruschetta is the best thing ever, but it’s close.