The end of daylight savings time?

One can only hope. Apparently there is a move afoot to do away with Daylight Savings Time as we know it. At least 24 states are considering dropping out of the DST rat race and two states have done so already. Gordon Hudson first proposed the idea in 1895 and the German Empire and Austria-Hungary implemented DST in 1916. These are the same people that brought you World War I.

The whole idea was controversial from the beginning. Winston Churchill liked the idea of confusing people every six months. That’s probably why he didn’t get re-elected after World War II.

In the beginning there were reasons for DST that were financial, political, and who knows what else. Today, hardly anyone knows what started the trend and even fewer know why it is continuing to be observed. One legislator had indicated that he intends to introduce a resolution that would end DST but that would preserve time just as it is now. In other words, we wouldn’t “fall back” in 2019 and the extra hour of daylight would be retained. That’s a piece of legislation I can support!

The main difference that people would notice is, instead of coming home in the dark after work this winter, there still might be some traces of daylight. Of course it would be darker in the mornings but think of all that extra daylight for grilling, fishing, sports, biking, motorcycling, mowing the lawn, or just simply setting on the porch in a white Cracker Barrel rocking chair, sipping a glass of sweet iced tea, and listening to the crickets chirp, the birds sing, and the bees hum. That’s what Southerners do anyway.

What do we need that extra hour in the morning anyway? So that we can see how long the traffic lines are on the trek to downtown Atlanta? That journey is demoralizing enough without seeing the bazillions of cars. Farmers don’t care one way or the other about DST if they are full-time farmers. They go by sunlight and not the clock.

I once was part-owner of several calves in Greene County, Tenn. Every morning before sunup all these calves had to be bottle-fed. It didn’t matter what time it was, when the calves were hungry, one got out to the barn. Hungry calves will not tolerate tardiness, whatever the clock says.

Kids are like that, or at least they were when I was a kid. We played until the sun went down and then came in for dinner (or, “supper,” as it was called in my neck of the words. “Dinner” was what you had at noon. I never heard of “lunch” until we started school). The clock didn’t matter. Sunlight did.

That’s why I endorse keeping the time the way it is now. We have “sprung forward” and now have an extra hour of daylight in the evenings. Let’s keep it, I say! Impeach any politician that threatens to take away our daylight! Bring out the guillotine! Okay, that might be a bit radical. No need to spill blood over sunlight.

Besides, the time changes make people cranky. Twice a year I have to send emails every day to my congregation reminding for the whole week leading up to Saturday night them that, if they don’t reset their clocks, they will be either an hour late or an hour early to church depending on the season. All these reminders probably make them cranky as they wade through their in-boxes. Or they just ignore me and don’t show at all. Then I get cranky.

Most areas of the United States observe daylight saving time (DST), the exceptions being Arizona (except for the Navajo, who do observe daylight saving time on tribal lands), Hawaii, and the overseas territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands.

Are Arizona and Hawaii better than the rest of us? Are American Samoa, Guam, and the rest, people of privilege? Nay, I say. We deserve better. Strike down DST! Consign it to the trash bin of history! Throw it out with the typewriter, the rotary phone, and the 8-track tape.

We can do it! After all, we got rid of the 3 percent telephone tax of 1898 which financed the Spanish American War. Unfortunately, it did take until 2006 to repeal it. Let’s repeal the DST of 1895! Just let us keep the hour of sunlight at the end of the day.

[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, 4881 Hwy. 34 E., Sharpsburg, GA between Newnan and Peachtree City (www.ctk.life). He is the bishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Diocese of the Mid-South which consists of Georgia and Tennessee and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at davidepps@ctk.life.]