“Daylight-saving time,” of course, does not save daylight, it only shifts the clock so that sunrise and sunset are later in the day. That means for a few weeks we wake in darkness again after the encouraging encroachment of sunrise earlier and earlier in the day, but suddenly the ride home at the end of the day is brighter.
Ending daylight-saving time would give us more light at dawn. At the summer solstice sunrise would be around 4:15 a.m. in these parts, sunset a little after 8 p.m. The Independence Day fireworks at dusk would be earlier, so kids and old folks wouldn’t have to stay up so much past their bedtime.
Personally, I like the idea of waking up to daylight. It’s a good metaphor, too — Evil thrives in darkness, so the earlier we shine a light, the better.
Ultimately, it’s an arbitrary exercise. Again, daylight-saving time does not save a whit of daylight. We get just as much daylight as the good Lord and Mother Nature will give us. We just assign different names to the hours between dawn and dusk.
Every year I consider rising and going to bed at the same time year-round — for example, 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. standard but then 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. savings time — but the rest of the world makes the adjustment, and so the blessed quiet of 5 a.m. is not as quiet when it’s converted into 6 a.m. And so I make the adjustment, too — call it peer pressure.
No matter what numbers we assign to the hours, however, the time between the sun’s rising and setting does not change, and so the important days are the spring equinox, when the sunlight finally defeats the darkness and day becomes longer than night, and the winter solstice, when night is as long as it ever will be but daylight begins its cold, hopeful return.
The summer solstice and fall equinox are thus bittersweet. The longest day of the year is often warm and sunny but the ensuing summer days grow incrementally shorter until day equals night again, and though the autumn colors are beautiful the daylight hours begin to wane.
I wish there was a way to save daylight more literally, but that’s not how the universe was designed. And just as the deepest valleys help us appreciate the view from the mountain top, the luxurious light of summer solstice is so glorious partly because we’ve known the darkness of winter six months earlier. And so we endure.
