When the U.S. Senate recently voted to make daylight saving time permanent, I could not help but feel that something had been adulterated. Instead of respecting time and its Author, we dare to put ourselves at the center of things.
The subject should not cause much debate since it appears to be a technical issue. Thus, I tended to ignore it when first hearing about it. However, with the passage of a bit of time, I started noticing a general discomfort around the matter. I felt the same uneasiness.
The issue is time. Daylight saving time. The Senate unanimously passed a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent. If made law, there will be no more falling back and springing forward on the calendar. We will forever prolong the day with an additional hour of artificially-perceived sunlight in the evening, and we will languish in the morning darkness.
What made the measure even more strange is that the bill passed without opposition. In a polarized America, nothing ever passes without opposition. When Sen. Marco Rubio asked for a unanimous consent vote, he got it. The whole chamber was stunned by what they had done. The bill now proceeds to the House.
Daylight Saving Time
From a practical perspective, the time change has its benefits for certain sectors. By extending the daylight hours, the schedule saves energy—a lot of energy much to the delight of the Greens. It helps businesses by extending daylight for entertainment, shopping, socializing, and sports after work hours.
Indeed, the practice started in the United States during the two world wars to save precious energy. After both wars, however, the government left the choice of adopting daylight saving time to states and localities. The result was a confusing patchwork of states, counties, cities and towns with different time observances. In 1966, the federal government standardized the observance of daylight saving time, applying it across the nation while allowing states (like Arizona and Hawaii) to opt out.
Opposition to the Time Change
At first, I thought I was the only one to be uneasy about permanent daylight saving time. But I soon perceived that many didn’t like the idea. The more practical people oppose the measure for a variety of reasons.
They certainly disagree with advocates who claim time is an artificial designation, and therefore it makes little difference how we observe it. Many experts claim that advancing time interrupts natural rhythms determined by the sun. Getting up earlier in the darkness throws off the body’s clock and impacts its function. Thus, some people have digestive or anxiety problems because of the change.
In addition, northern locations with limited sun accrue fewer benefits than other states. Certain agricultural tasks are better suited to standard time schedules. One strong reason against the measure is that it forces school children to wait for the bus in the dark, which can be dangerous.
A More Metaphysical Outlook
These reasons are logical and affect the debate, but they do not explain my uneasiness.
Something more metaphysical prompts me to oppose the permanent change. I believe that the nature of creation demands a certain respect for the natural rhythms of things. Time is not relative. There should be natural markers that precisely designate the maximum extent of light and darkness, called noon and midnight, respectively. Even nature observes that there are times that favor intense activity and others of tranquil rest. Each hour and period has its significance and mood.
These periods frame the day and provide an element of order that allows us to regulate our lives. People might organize their days around five o’clock teas or early-morning devotions. When we live in sync with an order that respects nature, our lives acquire calm, reflection, and purpose. We construct narratives celebrated by the passage of hours and the slow march of days and nights.
Defined times become full of symbolism and meaning. Time metaphors are powerful and poetic expressions that reflect a higher-ordered reality.
When we mess with time, we lose touch with this higher reality. Making time permanently relative, even by a single hour, sends a message that we determine what time is. I am reminded of the French Revolutionaries who attempted to change the calendar to reflect their unnatural philosophies. They failed miserably.
The modern tendency is to see time inside the context of our rushed schedules without markers. Then, time becomes a blur in which we experience the double sensation of having no time to do anything and doing nothing with our time. When there are no defined periods to reflect upon experiences, life can become a mishmash of impressions, emotions, and sensations.
The Notion of God’s Time
However, the most compelling reason for my uneasiness is that standard time reflects a concern for a superior order beyond its crude economic advantages.
Growing up, we always referred to standard solar time as God’s time. It was the way He made it. During the spring, we borrowed an hour from God so that some might benefit from it. However, we always returned it to Him in the fall before Thanksgiving. At least the clock-setting rituals reminded us that God is the owner of time.
Indeed, one of God’s first acts in Creation was establishing the parameters of time. Genesis (1:3-5) describes it in this way: “And God said: Be light made. And light was made. And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning, one day.”
We need to respect this time and its Author. And I believe it is for this reason that daylight saving time always had opposition throughout its history in America. Talking with people, I was surprised by how many share these sentiments.
Thus, when the Senate voted to make daylight saving time permanent, I could not help but feel that something had been adulterated. We put ourselves at the center of things. I don’t like the idea that noon will never really be high noon again. It will be whatever we say it is. The six o’clock Angelus prayer will never be prayed at the right time, but at the time we determine. In these times of extreme disorder, we need standards of stability, not relativity.
I know it might seem like a minor issue, but sometimes the little things can take on great importance. These issues leave me unsettled. It is best not to fool with God’s time.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.
I agree, in that i would prefer standard time be our standard without changes during the year. Let our clocks stay the same!
I agree with Mr. Cox, let’s have standard time year round. But it must be realized that the whole idea of Time Zones is artificial, created by the railroads when they came to power in order to standardize time schedules over vast distance east and west.. Deer hunters become keenly aware of this change when they are forced to enter the forest at dawn a few minutes later as one moves west within a time zone. Purely local time would have to be celebrated with a sundial which always put high noon at the middle of the dial along a particular line of longitude. Still, I agree with Mr. Horvat, messing with our clocks deeply violates God’s Natural Order, and our place and activities within it. We have the practical scientist Ben Franklin to thank for helping to dislodge us from the natural pattern of waking up with the sun.
I hate getting up in the dark. Daylight time year round will mean that in the eastern parts of our time zones, such as New York, the sun won’t come up until about 8:15 AM in the wintertime. In the western parts of time zones, such as western Ohio, the sun won’t come up until 9:15 AM. What are these senators thinking? What makes people think that driving in the morning in the dark is any safer than driving in the evening in the dark? Ironically, what we may wind up seeing is work hours being adjusted in the winter to compensate for the lack of Standard Time. This is simply another in a long line of denials of reality.
If it were up to me, daylight time would start on Easter Sunday, but no earlier than April 1, and it would end on Columbus Day. Anything more is a case of too much of an otherwise good thing.
I join Mr. Horvat in his argument and opposition to Daylight Savings Time in his wise essay. I view these imposed changes as a violation. Standardizing DST year-round would go against the grain of our biological cycle. It isn’t normal to wake up in darkness, it feels unnatural to turn on the lights in your kitchen and have coffee and breakfast and to start school or work while it is still dark outside. Children will feel it twice as much as adults. Farm animals will suffer likewise. Like Mr.Horvat, I find myself protesting internally against such unnatural impositions. Yes, we seem to be removing ourselves more and more from the intrinsic patterns of our internal clocks by imposing artificial schedules and lifestyles that are less and less attuned to the rythyms our Creator wisely intended for us. For myself, even that one hour’s shift twice a year creates an internal imblance, much like a bout of jet-lag, that takes quite an effort of readjustment every time.
The historian, professor Roger Ekirch, says to BBC, “The forgotten medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’,” that human beings used to sleep in two shifts, the first in the evening, and the other in the morning, waking up naturally for two quiet hours of night vigil, to stretch the average night, which lasts from dusk to dawn, perhaps ten hours, and that it was only with the industrial age that people came to sleep eight hours all through the night, with no night vigil.