Daylight savings is one of the few really beautiful things left in the world. Every year, we play the same practical joke on ourselves. The whole country is in on it—and yet we all fall for it.
Every year, on the second Sunday of March, the clocks “spring back” one hour. It’s the perfect gag. Losing an hour is inconvenient, but, if you’re a grown-up with reasonable habits, it’s a very small one. Even if you’re not, you have 364 days to prepare for the next clock-springing. They even give us a cheat day! On the first Sunday of November, the clocks “fall back.” We get our hour back, just in case eight months wasn’t enough time to recover.
And yet, despite all that, we fall for it. Every year, year after year, daylight savings hits like a freight train.
There are plenty of sound, practical reasons to keep daylight savings. We New Englanders really enjoy waking up to sunlight, considering we only get four hours of it during the winter months.
Still, I don’t think the reasons for it were ever practical. People say daylight savings was created to help the farmers, but a farmers will go to bed at 6 p.m. and wake up at two in the morning if that’s what it takes to get his work done. I do think it was the farmers’ idea, though. I think they wanted to lean on their fences at 9 a.m., when they’ve been up for five hours, and watch all the lawyers and bankers shuffling around like the walking dead.
Every year the townsfolk would stumble down the road, their buckle shoes unbuckled, their wigs on inside-out. The farmers would stand by with a mug of beer, and they’d laugh and laugh.
Really, it’s the perfect joke. If I snuck into my brother’s room and turned his clock back an hour, that would be mean. I’d think it was funny, but he wouldn’t. He’d have to rush through his shower and skip breakfast, and he’d still be late for work. His boss would chew him out. His colleagues might laugh, but theirs would be a cruel laugh, too.
If we turn everyone’s clock back, though—if everyone’s late, including the boss—well, then, there’s no one to laugh at but ourselves. That’s the beauty of the thing. We’re all the pranksters; we’re all the pranked. We’re all in on it, and yet we all fall for it.
Now the U. S. Senate has voted to abolish Daylight Savings Time. It still has to pass the House, but we can all see the writing on the wall. The gag it over. There will be no more springs, no more falls. I can just see poor Ben Franklin sitting in his rocking chair, his gray brow heavy, his blue eyes gazing sadly through half-moon glasses. “Don’t you get the joke?” he whispers. “Doesn’t anybody get the joke?”
The answer is no. And that’s what America has lost: our sense of humor. We still laugh, of course, but only at other people. That’s what television is for. If you want to laugh at fat people, watch The Maurey Show. If you want to laugh at stupid people, watch Jackass. If you want to laugh at old people, watch The View.
(When I was in college, some guy came up to me on campus and asked if I wanted to be on reality TV. Of course, I said yes. “You’ve got just the right look,” he said. Thank God I’d worn my favorite orange bowtie. “Hey, you don’t write poetry, do you?” he asked. Why, yes, I did! “Man, you’re going to be perfect.” What was the show? “Beauty and the Geek.”)
Daylight savings made us laugh at ourselves. That’s one thing we refuse to do.
I don’t know when Americans started taking themselves so seriously. It wasn’t that long ago Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken were household names. They made their fortunes teasing ordinary Americans, and we loved them for it. We liked nothing more than laughing at our own quirks and flaws. Actually, that’s what made Mencken so funny—and so grumpy. He was the only serious person in the whole country. He was never in on a single one of his own jokes.
Today everyone’s grumpy, though practically no one is funny. And now we can’t even blame it on the clocks. This isn’t the end of daylight savings, though. It will come back as soon as we’ve found our sense of humor.
Friends, in case it’s of interest, here’s what I’ve been up to:
1. You can read my response to Archbishop Viganò’s “declaration” on the war in Ukraine at Crisis Magazine.
2. Also, you might check out my review of an abysmal new history of the Middle Ages for the American Conservative.
By the way, I’m reading this excellent new study called The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis. The author is Jason M. Baxter of Wyoming Catholic College. The publisher is InterVarsity Press, whose books I’ve been devouring lately. If you’re a Lewis fan, I strongly recommend it.
Peace and the Good!