Time to Spring Ahead...

If you’re like me, you value your sleep. So Spring-time Daylight Savings changes are not necessarily welcomed. This is the time of year when we turn our clocks forward one hour so we can take advantage of the earlier sunrise caused by our seasonal rotation on the Earth’s axis. Now that we in the Northern Hemisphere are leaning toward the sun, we have more hours of sunlight, therefore more hours to get up!… Get out there!... Get things done!

Or, if you chose to be cynical… to lose an hour of sleep… Trust me, my 11-month-old daughter has no concept of daylight savings time and won’t understand that it’s bedtime when my clock says 8:30 p.m. and HER clock says “one more hour to play!” And even though the clock will now read 6:30 a.m. when she wakes up, MY body will still know it’s only 5:30 a.m.

So who came up with this brilliant idea anyway? And why are we subjected to it year after year?

Well, we can thank one of my favorite smart-a$$es, Benjamin Franklin, for first coming up with the concept during his time as an American envoy to France. Since 18th century Europeans did not keep strict schedules, the modern practice of evenly measured hours did not apply. He suggested Parisians wake earlier in the morning to take advantage of the morning sunlight and even suggested ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise to help them along.

The modern concept of Daylight Savings Time was developed by two men, independently and about 10 years apart. George Vernon Hudson suggested a two-hour shift in order to take better advantage of sunlit hours in New Zealand in 1895. William Willet conceived of a time shift in England in 1905 after noticing how much daylight was lost to sleeping during the summer months.

Despite gaining support in both countries, daylight savings time wasn’t implemented until 1916 when Germany and its allies began using it as a way to conserve coal during World War I. The United States adopted the practice in 1918, after most of Europe, Russia and a few other countries had already jumped on board.

Most of the United States now observes Daylight Savings Time from the second Sunday in March until the first Sunday of November. The change is made at 2 a.m. so that it causes as little disruption to the work-week as possible. (I suggest we all get those two weeks off from work with pay so we can adjust to the time change!) If you’re in Arizona, Hawaii or the American territories, you don’t have to worry about time changes. Your areas don’t participate.

While I hate the idea of having to get up an hour earlier, I have to admit I like having the extra daylight in the summer to play outside when it would normally be dark. Having the sun go down at 4 p.m. in the winter can be sooo depressing! And really, who am I kidding? Time has no meaning for my daughter so it doesn’t matter WHAT the clock says… when Her Majesty is awake… so is the rest of the house!