It’s the one time of year we all find ourselves waking up cranky – Daylight Saving Time has begun. Losing an hour of sleep because we simply change our clocks forward seems silly, but there’s reason behind the madness.
Long story short, it’s to match the time of the sunrise with a reasonable time to wake up and start our day.
But why not keep it all year long? The idea of an extra hour of light in the evening sounds fantastic!
Well, we tried that once before – in 1974. The U.S. did away with Standard Time (Nov. 7th to Mar. 13th), and kept Daylight Saving Time all year. Folks realized pretty quickly why we have the time change.
With DST all year – the extra hour of light in the evening is nice, especially in the winter, but in the deep winter the sunrise becomes too late. Meaning longer, darker mornings. In December, most locations in the states wouldn’t see the sunrise until after 8 a.m.!