Changing the Clocks Makes the Year Better

T hey’re at it again: “Standard time could become permanent in U.S. under new bill,” said The Hill a few days ago. Some would rejoice. All that effort twice a year! Turning back all the clocks until your hand cramps up halfway through, and you need a soothing unguent. The confusion! You mean the day we turn the clocks back, the day has 25 hours? It does the hour all over again, like it never happened? If I sin in that hour, must I confess later, or is it like shaking an Etch-a-Sketch?

On the other hand, they’re at it again: Daylight Saving Time could become permanent. A bill passed by the House would make DST permanent, which also eliminates fiddling with the clock, but makes mornings darker.

How about we take the moderate approach, which would irritate people with strong opinions and kick the can down the road: We do nothing.

I like the biannual readjustment. When the clocks fall back in the fall, the sun slams down early, and you drive home from work in December in the dark, a black vault aswirl with snow. It’s depressing, sure, but it also feels correct. The sun has no charity by the end of the year. It can barely be expected to show up and shine at all. Oh, but it’s there in the morning!, chirp the early birds. Great; I’ll make sure to set my alarm for 5 a.m. so I can watch a wan, cold coin rise from the east with all the enthusiasm of a man with a sprained ankle climbing up the steps of the Empire State Building.

The bill to make Standard Time permanent is a morning person’s bill, really. We’re not arguing about whether the sun should come up in the morning — I think we’re all in agreement that it should. The morning people don’t like rising in the dark, and that’s understandable— but a.) we have this thing called “electricity” that can be used for illumination; and b.) it’ll be up soon enough.

As you might expect, there’s an infantile intelligence-insulting name for the Standard Time bill: the “Sunshine for Our Kids Act of 2026.”

Why, so the kids don’t have to get up in the dark to get on the bus? Listen, junior, life is getting up in the dark to get on the bus. The bill is actually anti-child, inasmuch as it ruins the best part of the summer: the impossibly lovely length of a summer evening. In June, we’re still pushing forward — the days are longer and longer, the sun setting past 9 with slow, benevolent contentment, as if it knows we want to savor every minute, from the soft sunset glow to the tenebrous and reverent transition between the day and the night. There’s a moment when the sun has slid away behind the trees, and the fireflies pop out like a swarm of busy stars, the last emissaries of light before the humid night settles in. Summer feels eternal. It’s the settled state of things. There’s the Fourth to come, with its cookouts and conversation, the mad racket at night with the bright blooms in the sky. The rest of the summer stretches ahead. There’s time, so much time ahead, so many bright blue mornings and deep crimson sunsets. We all know the year turns on the solstice, that afterwards the evening’s light will be a minute less. That’s fine. Light past 9, summer’s fine.

The sun sets before 9 one day, and you don’t notice. Eventually, yes, it takes its leave in the latter half of the 8 o’clock ration. It’s still warm. The trees are green, and the lawns are lush. But. Even though August is supposed to be the last great interval of summer, we make small mental preparations for fall, and when the sun’s gone by 7:45 at the end of the month, you’re grateful it stuck around that long. Then comes the first cold night; then comes the first leaf to fall; then comes the silence of the crickets and the frogs; then comes the truth. Dark by 7.

Standard partisans want to take all that away and bring down the night at 6 p.m. on a warm September evening. They want the height of summer to end a little after 8. Here in Minnesota, we all know the hottest, most miserably humid day must be savored and celebrated because it’ll be 20 below soon enough, so this bill is nothing less than a crime.

It’ll probably be supported by Minnesota lawmakers because changing the clocks is probably privileged, colonialist supremacy or something. Who are we to impose our structures on nature? Who are we to define what is and is not the correct time? These people will act as if they bade the sun to rise earlier. All they will do is bring down the night when we were still celebrating the day. Typical.

If we must make a change, then let it be for Daylight Saving. The bill is called the Sunshine Protection Act, which is good. Don’t you want to protect sunshine? Why do you hate Sunshine? You know who else hated sunshine and went to live in a bunker? Hitler.