USA: Time to “fall back” – Daylight Saving ends

24 Comments

1. Andy Lucy says:

   5 November 2011 at 11:13 AM

   And don’t forget to change the batteries in your smoke and CO2 detectors.
2. bookworm says:

   5 November 2011 at 11:20 AM

   Actually, “falling back” works more in your FAVOR when it comes to getting to Mass on time, than does “springing forward.”

   The reversion to Standard Time means that you get an extra hour of sleep, or wake up an hour earlier than you normally would, which makes you less likely to be late for Mass. Plus, if you forget to set your clocks or watches and show up for Mass at what you assume is your usual time, you will arrive an hour EARLY, providing extra time for reflection and prayer, or for confession if the priest is available.
3. Mary Jane says:

   5 November 2011 at 11:23 AM

   An extra hour of sleep! Hoooooray!!
4. chris1 says:

   5 November 2011 at 11:25 AM

   bookworm beat me to it. I’m serving as Lector in the morning, and considering the slight cold I have today, the extra rest should help me to be in reasonably good voice. I think there’ll be some instruction in the new translation following Mass, and I’ll be called upon to assist with reading some of the parts.
5. wanda says:

   5 November 2011 at 11:59 AM

   Thanks for the reminder, Fr. Z. Just wrote myself a reminder note for tonight. You’re always looking out for us. I’m glad.
6. Charles E Flynn says:

   5 November 2011 at 12:45 PM

   Get Some Sleep: Fall back tips, by Lisa Shives, M.D.
7. AnnAsher says:

   5 November 2011 at 5:36 PM

   I try and try not to participate in daylight savings time.
8. BobP says:

   5 November 2011 at 5:40 PM

   Andy, I think you meant CO (carbon monoxide) detectors. CO2 detectors would be going off forever. :)
9. Mike says:

   5 November 2011 at 6:05 PM

   Yes, I don’t want to miss or be late for noon High Mass at St. John the Beloved, in McLean, Virginia.
   I only get to go there every, maybe, several weeks or so…it will be a treat, especially after the “gospel” singers who visited my parish last week. I LOVE lots of kinds of music; but sax, and drums, and all that made me feel as if I were in a lounge, not a church. It was painful.

   So, tomorrow at least, will be fine.
10. Bryan Boyle says:

    5 November 2011 at 6:17 PM

    Not to be pedantic, but it’s Daylight SAVING Time. We used to get pinged by the editors at the radio net if we said otherwise.
11. RichardT says:

    5 November 2011 at 7:02 PM

    We went back to God’s time last week, and I wish we would stick to it.

    Forget the arguments about whether it helps. Noon happens when noon happens, and anything else is just politicians trying to claim they control everything, even the movement of the heavenly bodies.
12. Tina in Ashburn says:

    5 November 2011 at 8:46 PM

    The state of Arizona ignores the time change – if they can do it, why can’t the rest of the country. How I hate the time change. So useless. Write your congressman.
13. APX says:

    5 November 2011 at 10:21 PM

    Aaah! DST! Now that I finally figured it out, it’s less annoying. Coming from a province with no DST, I was especially messed up with it. I ended up at Mass on Sunday evening 2 hours early. Now that I have it figured out, I can use the extra hour tomorrow.
14. moconnor says:

    5 November 2011 at 10:25 PM

    If you have children who have to wait a bus stop, you probably like it. It preserves daylight in the morning for a few weeks.
15. doodler says:

    6 November 2011 at 2:07 AM

    It is important to be up and awake with the wise virgins and not get caught sleeping with the foolish ones.
16. asperges says:

    6 November 2011 at 4:40 AM

    Most of us in Europe changed last week. It must a nightmare for the airlines etc when there are these discrepancies between major countries. Numbers at Mass were indeed down a bit last week.

    My Russian friend tells me that they are keeping to summer time this year and not changing, so they can expect darkness until about 10.30 in the morning in December and January in many cities. They made the decision so late, that 1000s of travellers missed trains, planes etc. last week.

    I wonder if God approves of daylight saving. You could argue it is against the natural order. I’m sure Adam and Eve didn’t worry about it. They just had the sun.
17. BobP says:

    6 November 2011 at 8:10 AM

    God created the universe in daylight savings time and in modern English. :)
18. yatzer says:

    6 November 2011 at 8:50 AM

    Thanks. I don’t read newspapers, and for some reason the online news sources I read didn’t mention it, or else they did and I missed it.
19. albinus1 says:

    6 November 2011 at 8:54 AM

    Noon happens when noon happens

    I wonder if God approves of daylight saving. You could argue it is against the natural order

    No, noon doesn’t happen “when noon happens”. If it did, we would all be living in the pre-railroad era when each town set its own clock by the sun — so noon in one town might be two minutes or three-and-a-half minutes or who-knows-how-many-minutes different from noon in the next town over. In a society where travel and communications were possible only as fast as a person or animal could run, it didn’t matter much. But after the invention of the telegraph and, esp., the railroad, it began to matter a great deal. The time zones were set up the railroad companies, so that they could create train timetables. The clock at the railroad station would display “railroad time”, which might be different from what the cl0ck in the town square said. Eventually, people began to see the benefits of having standardized time and changed the town square clock to match the railroad station clock.

    The very fact that we call the time to which we have now returned “standard time” is a giveaway. New York and Cleveland are both in the Eastern time zone, so clocks in both cities read noon at the same time. But does “noon” — real, astronomical noon — happen at the same time in both cities? Of course not, given that they are separated by several degrees of longitude.

    Do you really want to go back to a world where every town sets its own clock by the sun? I don’t.

    BTW, my mother, who grew up in the diocese of Cleveland (as did I), told me that when she was young, and the Communion fast began at midnight, in the Cleveland diocese the fast actually began at 12:27 a.m., because the bishop wanted the fast to start at astronomical midnight, and it was determined that astronomical midnight began when the clock said 12:27 a.m.

    As for daylight saving time being “against the natural order”, well, for that matter, so are the eyeglasses I am wearing to allow me to see this screen — to say nothing of the computer on which I am reading and typing this, the data network I am using to send it, the electric light that is illuminating the room, the furnace that is heating the house right now, and the electric coffeemaker in which I will soon make coffee. For that matter, so is written language itself. Just because something is manmade doesn’t make it evil.
20. albinus1 says:

    6 November 2011 at 8:57 AM

    PS — I’m old enough to remember when President Nixon decreed year-round daylight saving time, supposedly to save energy. I remember walking to school in the dark with my sister on winter mornings.
21. APX says:

    6 November 2011 at 10:33 AM

    I thought DST had to do with the war??

    Anyway, I wish today was Saturday so I could be more productive to use the extra hour.
22. Andrew Saucci says:

    6 November 2011 at 5:34 PM

    What is most important on the day we turn the clocks back is that the priest remember to turn his clock back one hour. Otherwise, he will possibly enter an empty church and start grumbling about what a bunch of faithless parishioners he has as he starts to offer Mass all by himself.
23. mamosco says:

    6 November 2011 at 5:52 PM

    you really only can miss mass in the spring; in that case you would be an hour late as apposed to an hour early
24. irishgirl says:

    7 November 2011 at 12:31 PM

    albinus1-I remember that period in history, too. It was during the so-called ‘energy crisis’ and the Arab oil embargo in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War with Israel. I had just started my first job then, and luckily I didn’t drive as yet. My parents dropped me off and picked me up.
    I usually hate DST-I never seem to get enough sleep. It seems the night always goes so fast!

Comments are closed.