Ah, the weekend we change the clocks; that’s what Grandma called it. Back then, we literally had to move the hands of the clock ahead. Some of us still do…
Changing the number on a clock doesn’t add any time to our days but, just like that, we’ll have more light at the end of the day tomorrow. Many of you love it. For what it’s worth, I prefer the light in the morning but it’s not up to me. However, adding an hour of daylight on to the end of the day can feel like a gift after a long winter of dark evenings. As the warmer spring weather arrives, nothing is nicer than having more time in the evening to enjoy it.
So where did this come from? Well, let me start by saying that if I had a dime for every time I heard someone say: “…it’s for the farmers,” I’d be rich.
Contrary to popular belief, farmers did not lobby for daylight saving to have more time to work in the fields. The agriculture industry was opposed to the time switch when it was first implemented as a wartime measure on March 31, 1918. The sun, not the clock, dictated farmers’ schedules, so daylight saving was very disruptive.
DST was designed to make life more enjoyable based on the premise that we typically spend more awake time in the evenings than in the mornings.
I don’t love it, but I make the necessary changes to the clocks before going to bed on Saturday and that’s about it. For some, it’s not quite that easy. From experience, I can tell you that on the farm, it’s less about digital clocks and more about internal ones. So, they ease the girls into it.
One last thing. Before the weekend is out, we’ll have heard the phrase Daylight “Savings” Time far too often. The word “saving” acts as part of an adjective rather than a verb; the singular is grammatically correct. The meaning: a time for saving daylight!
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Cindy Day is the chief meteorologist for SaltWire Network
