While late sleepers might want to curse the day, those who can’t wait for late-afternoon daylight will rejoice. Why? It’s the time when almost everybody will change their clocks this Sunday. Do you know why?

Well, on Sunday, March 11 we will switch our clocks ahead one hour and move into daylight-saving time. No doubt many people will seem a little bit more grumpy than normal this weekend because we all loose one hour of sleep. Might I suggest adding a few more scoops of coffee to your morning brew?

But it’s all for a good reason, so the sacrifice is worth it: We are saving daylight, or so they say.

On Monday, some of our children will once again head off to school in near darkness. However, we’ll arrive home from work to see the sun high in the sky for a few more hours.

Grab your shovel, grab your rake, it’s time for chores because the sun sets late.

Yep, welcome to daylight-saving time.

But why do we change our clocks?

Daylight-saving time and Benjamin Franklin

Can we blame this one on Benjamin Franklin?

Some people say "yes." Franklin suggested in 1784 that if people rose before sunrise they would save on the cost of candles used during the evening hours. The cost of a candle in 1784 was about the equivalent of half a day’s wage for the common worker.

However, most people of the time said they still worked from “Can’t see to can’t see.” In the end, it really didn’t matter when they got up.

Daylight-saving time and World War I

The idea didn’t really catch on until during World War I, when the government said moving to daylight-saving time would save on the cost of artificial lighting.

After World War I, each state set its own daylight-saving time. Of course, that caused a great amount of confusion if you lived on the border of a pair of states with different settings.

Passenger railroad operators and the airlines wanted a standard daylight-saving time, so their schedules would match. Is it really possible to leave one place for another and arrive there at a time that is earlier than it was when you began your journey in the first place?

Huh?

Apparently it was possible at one time. However, that all changed when Congress got involved.

Daylight-saving time and the Uniform Time Act of 1966

The Uniform Time Act of 1966 eased the confusion and set the standard times when almost everybody would start and end daylight-saving time.

I wonder if life was easier when each household contained only one television and one clock. Now our televisions have clocks. Our cars have clocks. Even our clocks have clocks. We have so many clocks that many people no longer have clocks hanging on their kitchen walls.

So the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November become marathon days when we try to change as many clocks in one minute so they all have the same time when we are done.

Is daylight-saving time really worth it?

So, is it really worth it?

The thinking years ago was that more family members use more electrical appliances in the early evening hours when they are home from school or work and not yet sleeping.

However, recent studies don’t really prove that we save any significant amount of money and energy by changing our clocks twice a year.

We use electrical appliances all of the time no matter when the sun sets or rises.

So, do we really have to make the dash around the house, to the car, the shed and even back to the house to change all of the clocks twice a year?

In Russia, where workers are never really praised for their amount of hard work, the country went to permanent daylight-saving time in 2011. That way, its citizens avoided the twice-a-year, clock-changing madness that we capitalists enjoy.

However, they might have made a good point.

I’d be OK with going to work in darkness and coming home to an hour of light in the middle of winter. How about you?