I Love Daylight Saving Time (sarcastic)
Daylight saving was a good choice for society; it's my favorite.
It’s that magical time of year! That day in which we all lose an hour of sleep in exchange for an extra hour of jarring pitch-blackness when we all wake up in the morning (I mean, an extra hour of sunlight at night).
It’s such a lovely time of year and a great innovation for the betterment of society! Allow me, dear reader, to use a whole Substack newsletter post to sing the praises of daylight saving time and post a list of everything I love about it.
(NOTE: This post is entirely satirical and sarcastic. I hate daylight saving time with a burning passion, and I hope to one day inspire enough of a movement to force the U.S. government to eradicate it entirely. Do not accidentally misread this as true praise for this travesty of a timekeeping tradition.)
1) More Daylight… at Night
The thing that daylight saving time (not “daylight savings time,” you grammarless plebeians1) is most famous for is the extra hour of sunlight it blesses us with at night. Traditionally (at least for the entirety of human history), the darkness of night was a time to initiate our circadian rhythms to take part in the very human biological need for sleep, but I appreciate that we humans have evolved so far as to play God and push that aside entirely.
Getting rid of that pesky extra hour of darkness at night makes it possible to do so many activities! Now when my weird neighbor, Kevin, invites me to join his evening Star-Trek-cosplay-slash-bhiking (that’s “bike-hiking”) club that I have no desire to join, I can’t use “I don’t know, Kev, it gets kinda dark at 5:30,” as an excuse not to join. Wow! Thanks for expanding my horizons, daylight saving time (both figuratively and literally)!
So who wants to join Kevin’s nerd exercise group with me?…
2) More Darkness… in the Morning!
Remember that circadian rhythm thing I talked about earlier? Well we humans have thrown aside the morning version of that too! Good for us!
Never mind that proportionately more car accidents happen the week after daylight saving starts, or that everyone complains about sleep deprivation (including teenage students who are especially vulnerable to the permanent detrimental effects of regular sleep disruption), or the lack of productivity when sleep schedules change.2 That sudden pitch-blackness in the morning when we’re all trying to wake ourselves up really makes me feel alive!
3) The Economic Benefits
Fun fact: it wasn’t farmers!
The common myth is that farmers were the ones who benefitted most from daylight saving, but actually it was the World War I era Germans who first officially introduced it as a way to save heating/lighting fuel at night.3 I don’t know about you, but I’m so thankful that I can wait until like 7:30 to turn on the kerosene lamp sconces in the Victorian-era house I totally own! Thanks, the Germans!
Never mind that the energy bills where I live (southern California) could benefit from being darker earlier at night so we’re less likely to use our air conditioning when we get home from work; we need daylight saving! That extra daylight makes it more enticing to get out there and keep spending money at stores, Disneylands, restaurants, and other retail places later in the day. I know when it gets darker, I get sleepier and less likely to spend money on stupid (ahem, I mean, totally necessary) things.
How else are giant corporate retailers supposed to make an extra hour’s worth of money? Producing good, quality products? Investing resources into researching a common need in their geographical context and finding a way to fulfill that need? Pffft!
Pffffft!
PFFFFFFFFFT!!!
This is the 21st century. Why should corporations be required to stick to the basic tenets of traditional capitalism? Why shouldn’t they use artificially timed sunlight to trick the human population into spending their hard-earned cash?
4) I’m a Big Ben Franklin Fan
What’s that? Ben Franklin didn’t actually propose daylight saving time? It was actually proposed by George Hudson 95 years after Ben Franklin died?4
Okay, fine, scratch that one.
Next you’re gonna tell me that Franklin’s famous proposal that the turkey be the national bird of the United States is just a myth.5
5) Time is Just a Social Construct Anyway
Time, like, doesn’t even actually exist, bro.
Sure, in a modern society we really should measure everything including the time of day in order to properly function and systematically advance. Sure measuring time with clocks makes it easier to meet socially with friends, progress physically (like with running times)6, and cook edible food.
But besides enriching social lives, enhancing physical wellbeing, making nutrition possible, aiding in preventing salmonella poisoning, helping keep our lives manageable, and making other measurable scientific strides possible, what have clocks ever done for us?!?
In Conclusion…
Daylight saving time is great. The citizens of the United States of America and the representatives they elected should be proud of the strides they’ve made in making daylight saving time a thing!
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/daylight-savings-time.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/daylight-saving-time-causes-lower-productivity-and-higher-health-care-costs-studies-say
https://fi.edu/en/science-and-education/benjamin-franklin/daylight-savings-time
https://fi.edu/en/science-and-education/benjamin-franklin/national-bird
“You can't manage what you can't measure” - Peter Drucker (or colloquially, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”)