Everyone blames the farmers. It’s one of the most persistent myths of modern American culture. We are convinced that daylight saving time must have been created to benefit farmers, and no matter how many times the truth is explained, people prefer to remember the lie.

The truth is complicated. I suppose that’s why we sometimes repeat explanations that that aren’t true — they are easier to remember. We will choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, and maybe in this case, our simple brains also like having someone to blame. 

Or perhaps some of us like the idea that the inconvenience of jostling around our schedule is a sacrifice made for the greater good. We’ll do it for the farmers. They better be grateful.

Well, it turns out they’re not grateful. They never wanted daylight savings time and actually lobbied against it back in 1918 when it first began in the United States. Farmers don’t like changing their clocks any better than the rest of us, and for all the same reasons. There are many studies that demonstrate the importance of sticking to a predictable rhythm of sleeping and waking, so it’s no surprise that the twice-yearly time change has negative effects on people.

For one, AAA warns that the end of daylight savings time each year marks the beginning of an uptick in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities. The reasoning for this is that moving an hour of daylight to the morning means that people are driving home at dusk and in the dark. Pedestrians and cyclists are more likely to be struck by a vehicle in low light.

Springing the clocks forward at the beginning of daylight saving time is associated with sleep deprivation and an increase in heart attacks and auto accidents. Falling back like we just did means less light, more pedestrian deaths, and many of us receive less vitamin D, produce less serotonin, and suffer higher rates of depression.  Quite a price for that extra hour of sleep. 

So, who’s responsible if not the farmers? Starting in 1918, President Roosevelt proposed nationwide daylight saving time as part of the war effort designed to take better advantage of the daylight hours and burn less fuel. That’s why daylight saving time was originally called “war time.” 

After the war, no one could agree on whether to go back to standard time or to continue saving daylight.

Some felt they were gaining an hour of light at the preferred time by taking it from where it wasn’t so important — but others saw it differently, and we’ve been arguing ever since. 

The issue used to be so controversial that it had to be decided town by town. It’s kind of like some of the hot button issues today. Let the states decide abortion. Let towns decide zoning. No national or state level politician has to risk their career by weighing in on no win issues. 

But in this case, it was time, and we all just went around looking at different clocks.

With all the fussing about standard or daylight saving time, we forget that for most of human history, and the entire history of the natural world, we have operated on an entirely different system. It has had variations, going by names such as “local time”,  “sun dial time” or even “God’s time.” 

All life is in one way tied to the 24-hour schedule which revolves around the Earth’s rotation and high noon is the point in the day, in any location, where the sun is highest in the sky.

It wasn’t until 1887 that Camden voted to adopt “railroad time” where the nation was divided up into 4 time zones which mirrored the system set up by the railroads to keep their trains from having to deal with the confusion of different local times from town to town.

Until the adoption of railroad time, a town clock would be set in each locality, accurately synchronized so that 12 p.m. would fall when the sun was most directly shining. 

In 1921, amidst one of the many arguments about whether or not Camden should adopt daylight saving time, the editors of the Camden Herald tried to remind the townspeople that there was nothing sacred about standard time. They pointed out that it was not so long ago that any form of standardized time was a controversial topic in Camden. All are time zones are human creations, or rather, railroad creations, the editors weighed in:

“In the old days, before the adoption of standard time, every place, north and south, had the same time, and every place to the east and west had a different time of its own. In other words, every place on the same meridians of longitude have the same time and every place east or west of that meridian had a different time. For example, when it was 9 o'clock in Camden, it was a little past nine in North Haven, and not quite nine in Hope.”

The newspaper was trying to make a statement about change and they jokingly reminded all the disgruntled townspeople that we had already made the transition away from sun dial time, despite the objections of many religious people and other purists who believed that standardized time amounted to man’s interference in the natural rhythm of things imposed by God.

Maybe there is something to that. As more and more work becomes remote, people are creating their own rhythms of sleeping and waking,  defying to greater and lesser degrees the natural order of the sun.

By the 1920s, no one was advocating for a return to the sun dial, but perhaps there will come a day when we rethink the pros and cons of our time zones set up the way they are.

Camden has voted on the issue of daylight saving time so many times that I grew tired of writing down all the dates.

The editors of the Camden Herald were exhausted by the issue too, reporting that the whole thing was just a nuisance. There was no standardized system and different states had different times as the “official state time” while individual municipalities were permitted to go their own way. Camden and Rockland had narrowly voted to go with daylight saving time whereas all the other surrounding towns were on standard time.

They wrote that “the public are so equally divided, as to which time they want that there is no end of dissatisfaction, growling and argument going on about it, whichever way the town clock may stand.” Just weeks later, a petition drive forced another vote and the town reverted to standard time for the rest of the year. A total of 900 people voted and just 22 votes made the difference.

Eventually, states and congress put a stop to the madness. I’ll have to research how that came to be another time. There is a federal law that allows states to vote on whether or not to adopt daylight saving time, meaning that they can, if they choose, stay on standard time all year and avoid the change. The same freedom however is not extended to a state wishing to adopt year round daylight saving time. 

In 2021, the Senate voted almost without discussion to make daylight saving time permanent, but the House didn’t even take up the matter. While experts agree that bouncing back and forth between standard and daylight saving time is bad, there is not much agreement on which system should be the permanent one. Doctors say it’s probably better to have the extra light in the morning, but the business community and traffic engineers seem to want it in the evening.

Camden, like all towns, has done its fair share of arguing about silly things. Usually, it’s hard to have perspective on these matters until much later when we look back and laugh at all the odd beliefs and arguments that influenced decision making at one time or another. I wonder what my grandchildren will be shaking their heads at in 50 years as they read about the things we argued about in town back in 2024. I have a few ideas. 

No matter where you stand on the issue of God's time, war time, or daylight savings time, please take extra care to watch where you are going. Like I said, every year, pedestrians die when drivers are temporarily blinded by the sun or their vision is obscured at night. Slow down, wear sunglasses when you drive in the day, and highly visible clothing when you walk and bike.

Alison McKellar lives in Camden