Daylight Saving Time is a relic of wartime energy experiments.

Yes, it’s mostly about saving fuel during World War I — not farmers.

The idea was simple: shift an hour of daylight from the morning (when people are asleep) to the evening (when they’re awake and using lights). Germany did it first in 1916 to save coal. The US followed in 1918. After the war, it was so unpopular it got repealed. Then World War II brought it back. Again, repealed. Then the 1970s oil crisis made it permanent-ish again.

March is just when the days get long enough that the shift makes sense. In the US, we spring forward on the second Sunday of March because the Energy Policy Act of 2005 said so. (It used to be April, but they moved it to try to save a little more energy.)

The “farmers love DST” thing is a myth. Farmers actually hate it — their schedules are tied to the sun, not the clock. They fought it from day one.

Every year we argue about whether to keep it. Nobody likes the spring-forward hangover, but nobody can agree on which permanent time to pick. So we’ll keep doing this until Congress accidentally fixes it.