Whensday: Moving the clock or the calendar?

At the end of this month we will move the clocks back an hour. “Fall back” is what we say to remember which way the clock goes. A young person recently asked me: “Do we really need to do that? Doesn’t it happen automatically?” And of course, if you only have your computer or smart phone to use as a time keeping instrument in your house, perhaps this could be true. But many people will still have to think about the various clocks around the house. 

In Belgium and the Netherlands we always change our clocks, moving out of Daylight Savings Time (DST) on the 4th Saturday to Sunday. This year that will be October 25-26 (we are technically supposed to change the clock at 2 am). The US will change a week later, if I understand correctly, because DST should end on the first Sunday in November which will be November 2. So we here in Belgium will already be well-rested before the Americans finally set their clocks back. 

Now imagine that you not only have to jump in time, but completely skip several days. That is what happened in 1582 for Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland. In that year those countries skipped from October 4 to October 15 when they decided to switch to the new Gregorian calendar. Of course it took decades to be adopted in other places. 

Day light Savings Time was officially introduced in the US in 1966 and has been a bone of contention ever since. People talk every year about ending it, but wonder if they should then keep Winter Time as the default or Summer Time. As long as we don’t lose two weeks on our calendar as they did in 1582, I think I fine with either decision.