Pick a Time. But Pick the Correct Time.

I hate Daylight Saving Time.

Not in the casual way people hate stepping in something wet while wearing socks. I hate it with conviction. With research. With the kind of completely reasonable fury usually reserved for people who stop at the top of escalators.

It is one of the stupidest things we, as a society, continue to do voluntarily.

Twice a year, millions of us change every clock we own, destroy our sleep schedules, confuse our pets, accidentally show up somewhere an hour early or late, and spend several days asking each other, “Wait, what time is it really?”

All so we can pretend we have somehow manipulated the sun.

We have not.

Daylight Saving Time does not create daylight.

It does not manufacture it.

It does not stretch it.

It does not pull additional sunshine from some federal daylight reserve and distribute it to deserving citizens.

The sun is going to rise when the sun rises and set when the sun sets, regardless of what number we have collectively agreed to display on the microwave.

There is an old analogy that perfectly explains the entire ridiculous concept:

Only an idiot cuts a foot off the bottom of a blanket, sews it to the top, and announces that the blanket is now longer.

That is Daylight Saving Time.

Same blanket.

Different foot.

Congratulations, everyone.

I Agree. Stop Changing the Clocks.

Now, this is where I lose some of my fellow clock-change haters.

Because I completely agree that we should stop changing the clocks twice a year.

Pick a time.

Stop changing it.

Leave the clocks alone.

Let the microwave finally know peace.

But for the love of all that is chronologically reasonable, pick the correct time.

Standard Time.

Real Time.

Sun-in-the-sky time.

Not Permanent Daylight Saving Time, which is essentially saying, “We are tired of changing the clocks back and forth, so from now on, we will simply leave them wrong.”

That is not a solution.

That is giving up halfway through fixing the problem.

Imagine realizing that one of the legs on your kitchen table is an inch too short and saying, “I’m tired of this table wobbling. From now on, we’re just going to tilt the entire house.”

Problem solved.

You Are Not Getting More Sun

This seems to be the biggest selling point for permanent Daylight Saving Time.

“But I like having more daylight!”

Excellent news.

You have exactly the same amount of daylight either way.

We are not voting on the sun.

Nobody in Congress is standing beside a giant celestial dimmer switch deciding whether Pennsylvania gets an extra forty-five minutes on Tuesday.

Daylight Saving Time simply changes what we call the hour when that daylight occurs.

And yes, that means there can be more daylight according to the clock after work.

But there is a trade-off.

That daylight has to come from somewhere.

You are not adding it to the day. You are moving the labels.

So when people celebrate the idea of a later sunset, they often forget that it also means a later sunrise.

Permanent Daylight Saving Time means darker mornings, particularly in winter. Children going to school in the dark. People commuting in the dark. Everyone stumbling around at 8:00 in the morning wondering why the sun apparently called out sick.

And here is the part that absolutely fascinates me.

One of the arguments I recently saw presented in favor of choosing a permanent time looked at how much of the year Americans could have both a sunrise before 7:30 a.m. and a sunset after 5:30 p.m.

With permanent Daylight Saving Time?

About 60 percent of the year.

With our current clock-changing circus?

About 69 percent.

With permanent Standard Time?

Seventy-two percent.

Standard Time wins.

The supposedly boring option that everyone thinks is going to steal their summer evenings actually gives us the best overall balance of usable morning and evening daylight across the year.

The sun has apparently reviewed the proposal and would like us to stop helping.

Because Standard Time Is Actually Based on Something

Here is the other thing that drives me insane.

Time is already a construct. I understand that.

We invented clocks. We created time zones. We drew imaginary lines across the planet and decided everyone on one side would agree that it was 3:00 while everyone on the other side agreed it was 2:00.

Fine.

Civilization requires some paperwork.

But Standard Time is at least anchored to something real: the position of the sun.

Solar noon is when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. Our standardized time zones approximate that because, obviously, we cannot have every town operating three minutes apart from the next one unless we want airline travel to become even more emotionally devastating.

But Standard Time is our best organized approximation of actual solar time.

Then Daylight Saving Time walks in and says:

“Okay. But what if we just call noon 1:00?”

Why?

Because we would like it to stay light later.

That is not changing time.

That is lying to the clock.

Sundials are not wrong during Daylight Saving Time.

We are.

The sundial is sitting there minding its own business, faithfully reporting the position of the actual sun while the rest of us point at our phones and say, “Actually, it’s an hour later now.”

Imagine having the confidence to correct the sun.

Change the Schedule, Not Time

If people genuinely want more daylight after work, I have a radical proposal.

Go to work earlier.

Change business hours.

Change school schedules.

Adjust summer hours.

Do literally anything involving the human schedules we invented instead of changing the official measurement of time for an entire country.

We have somehow decided that changing when things happen is unreasonable, but changing what time we say it is when they happen makes perfect sense.

“I wish I got home while it was still light outside.”

Okay.

What if work ended earlier?

“No. Absolutely not. Move noon.”

Perfect.

No notes.

We Have Already Tried Permanent Fake Time

And here's the truly beautiful part.

America has already tried this.

In 1974, during the energy crisis, the United States switched to year-round Daylight Saving Time.

People initially liked the idea.

Then winter arrived.

Suddenly everyone remembered that the sun does not care about legislation.

The dark mornings were wildly unpopular, particularly when children were heading to school before sunrise, and support for year-round Daylight Saving Time dropped. The experiment was supposed to last two years.

It did not.

We changed it back.

And now, more than fifty years later, we are apparently standing in the kitchen staring at the same hot stove and saying:

“I wonder what happens if we touch it this time.”

We know.

We wrote it down.

So Yes. Stop Changing the Clocks.

I am completely on board.

The clock-changing ritual is absurd. It is disruptive. It is unnecessary. I would happily live the rest of my life without wandering through my house twice a year trying to remember which appliances are smart enough to change themselves and which ones are going to remain in another temporal dimension until I finally need the oven.

Pick one time.

Keep it forever.

But pick the correct time.

Standard Time.

The time that best aligns our clocks with the natural day.

The time that gives us more reasonably usable morning and evening daylight across the year.

The time we already tried abandoning permanently and then hurried back to when everyone realized winter mornings had become a Victorian orphanage.

Stop changing the clocks.

Absolutely.

But do not make Daylight Saving Time permanent just because people like the word daylight and assume they are receiving some kind of bonus sun.

You are not getting a longer blanket.

You just cut a piece off one end and sewed it to the other.

And personally, if we are finally going to stop doing this twice-a-year nonsense, I think we should listen to the one authority that has remained remarkably consistent throughout this entire debate.

The sun has been keeping time for approximately 4.6 billion years.

I think it has seniority.