We have returned once more to standard time as another daylight saving time has ended. This means that many people are questioning why we go through this rigmarole every year. A number of studies now show that shifting back and forth between daylight saving time and standard time is a bad idea.
Claims differ regarding if daylight saving actually saves money. It may have saved more money years ago, but there is not much evidence of it today. When Indiana finally joined the clock changing party in 2006, it was found that the switch was actually costing the people of Indiana $9 Million a year, or $3.29 per household in higher electricity bills!
Then we should consider the toll that is taken on each of us as we must reset our internal clocks to a different sleep cycle. One 2016 study showed that time changes cost the US economy $434 million per year. The study pointed to how the change in sleep causes a spike in workplace injuries due to sleepiness and other health problems, including an increase in serious incidents like heart attacks. Other costs are incurred in general unproductivity due to being tired and out of rhythm. While this should be predictable due to the loss of sleep in the spring, there is also a rise in these problems now, even with the extra hour of sleep.
It seems that today most agree that we should end this cycle of clock changing, but disagreement comes as to how. Some argue for making daylight saving permanent, but I would like to argue that we should ditch the whole idea and return to a permanent standard time.
Unmooring Ourselves from Creation
I really started thinking about this when I read an editorial a few years ago that argued for permanent daylight saving. The writer argued that our counting of time is arbitrary, so why not go to a permanent daylight saving time. I was very tempted to write a snarky letter to the editor asking if this writer had ever noticed a bright yellowish ball in the sky during the day.
Trying to leave cynicism aside, the reality is that day and night are governed by the sun. In fact, this was part of creation, from the beginning. Genesis 1:14-18 tell us:
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. (ESV)
Not only is this how God created the world, but it is also involved in how God created us. Our bodies are designed to work based upon the sun. Our circadian rhythm, which helps govern healthy sleep, is based upon the sun, including the creation of melatonin when the sun sets. As a result, through most of history our activity was regulated by the sun and daylight hours.
From Solar Time to Clock Time
Originally, all time was based on the sun, with forms of sundials being the only timepieces. However, depending on your latitude, the amount of sunlight in a day varies during the year. People used to break up this sunlight into even divisions for the day. This means that for the ancients there were 12 hours of daylight every day, but the length of an hour changed throughout the year.
Then when the mechanical clock was invented in the Middle Ages, suddenly things were reversed. Rather than timing our days by the sun, and that making the hour vary, now we timed things based upon the clock, making the hour the standard while the length of the day (daylight) changed throughout the year.[1]
However, this just changed how we would count the time but not how we lived our days. Most people still rose with the sun and would wind-down their day with the sunset. The sun still governed our lives.
The Modern World Defines Time
The mechanical revolution and modern technology changed all of that. The next substantial change in measuring time came with the invention of the railroad. Up until this time, every location set their clocks based upon when the sun was high overhead. One would pay attention to when noon occurred and then set watches and clocks to match. This worked fine because everyone in each locale was on the same time, and travel was slow enough that you could adjust as you went. With the creation of the railroad, suddenly things needed to be coordinated across the continent. To have trains scheduled by the countless local times would create chaos and potentially even cause catastrophic collisions.
In 1883, the railroads divided North America into four time zones, with each zone exactly an hour off from the two on either side of it. These zones were still based upon the sun, but now noon was where the sun was high overhead at the center of the time zone and the rest of the time zone adjusted to match that time. Eventually, the world was divided into the 24 time zones that we have today.
It was not until WWI that the first attempts were made to create daylight saving time with the hopes of reducing energy consumption. This was tried on and off until we got to where we are today.
Why Standard Time is Better
It seems to me that the creation of daylight saving time is something that distances us from God’s creation as we try to create our own approach to time. Yes, we now have the technology to create light during the night such that we could choose to arrange our days and nights in any manner. However, this also separates us from creation, including the sun.
I have heard that when the first time zones were instituted, some pastors decreed that it was blasphemous because it was saying that we choose when noon is, rather than using the sun which God created. I would not go that far; the coordination of life that time zones allow is a good thing. However, we should acknowledge that even that move was a move to separate ourselves from creation. But that is relatively minor compared to arbitrarily saying that the sun should be at “high one.”
We need to work to find the balance that allows us to both make use of the gifts of technology that God has given us while still admitting that we are His creatures and a part of creation. It seems to me that if you want more daylight in the evening, there is nothing wrong with starting work an hour earlier. However, when we call something that which it is not, we are on dangerous ground. So, it seems that the best approach is to call noon, noon and set our clocks, at least regionally, by that. Then we can adjust how much we do before and after that.
Some evidence shows that this approach is healthier. In 1974 the US briefly experimented with year-round daylight saving time, but it was found that it caused issues, including in Florida where eight children died in traffic accidents in early morning crashes in January of that year. Due to the general outcry, the idea was dropped in 1975. Later daylight seems to work with long summer days but not with short winter days. It seems that no matter how many alarm clocks and electric lights we use, our circadian rhythms still work best by the sun.
It is almost like that is how we were created.
[1] Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself (New York: Random House, 1983), 39.