Everyone looks forward to Daylight Savings Time. In the fall we receive the gift of an extra hour, resulting in a 25-hour day. That extra hour feels like a rare gift of time! In the spring, we often grumble about losing an hour of sleep, but relish that the evenings begin to last longer. As springtime moves into summer, the longer hours of daylight bring with it a special feeling of happiness and bliss.
Daylight Savings Time (DST) has a long history around the world, not just in America. Our own Benjamin Franklin is quoted with the famous proverb, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” He anonymously published a letter in 1784 (while serving as the American envoy to France) suggesting the Parisians economized on candles by rising earlier to get more use out of the day’s sunlight. It was actually New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, who in 1895, proposed DST as we recognize it today. Hudson’s interest in extending the daylight hours was to give him more time to collect insects.
Over the next few decades, different proposals for DST popped up across the globe for varying reasons and justifications. Ultimately, DST was established on a more global basis as a way to conserve energy, namely coal, during WWI. After the war ended, DST was mostly abandoned but returned during WWII, again to save on resources and energy sources. The energy crisis of the 1970s brought another return to the practice. Proponents of the practice argue that in addition to added daylight hours to perform leisure activities, energy consumption decreases as there is less energy consumed. Many opponents today argue that DST does not have any real impact on overall energy use.
Daylight Savings Time changes are different throughout the world, indeed even in neighboring counties in our own America. You can read more about the various practices around the world by visiting this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_country.
In any case, as we “spring forward” and begin to see more of the glorious sunshine, take the opportunity to use this extra daylight to do something nice for a friends, elderly neighbor or loved one living in a senior care community. You can visit our website at www.EvergreenSLC.com and see a list of our locations to find a community near you. After a long winter of dreary and gray days, residents would love to see a ray of sunshine come to visit them.
