This weekend, sometime in the wee Sunday morning hours of November 7th, we must once again participate in our most tedious national tradition: changing the clocks back an hour to appease the Gods Of Daylight Saving Time. The system has only been in place nationwide for a little over 50 years, but it feels like the ritualistic shifting of our microwave ovens and wristwatches is some sacred American pastime.

Increasingly, people seem more and more fed up with it, especially as there is tons of evidence that it's not actually benefitting anyone, and different parts of the country get vastly different amounts of daylight depending on where you live.

"It's one of those things that just boggles the mind. I don't understand why it still happens, I don't know why," said John Homenuk, the co-founder of New York Metro Weather. "There are some arguments on the other side that 'it was designed for agriculture' or whatever. That's all fine and dandy, but it's 2021 and we don't need to have a sunset at 4:20 p.m. at all. Ever."

He added that it's something he feels "might never change, or is going to require some sort of huge push to get changed. But I think it is so ridiculous."

But that push is actually happening: according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 19 states have passed legislation of resolutions in the last four years supporting year-round daylight saving time. And now New York is hoping to join those ranks.

That piece of legislation was introduced this year by Democratic Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara and Republican Sen. Joseph Griffo—you can read the text of the bill here.

Santabarbara told Gothamist that like clockwork, he hears complaints from constituents every time the time-change is upon us: "During this time of the year, you hear all the complaints about changing the clock back and forth twice a year," he said. "I think there's a lot of communities that just don't want to do this anymore, and don't really understand why we have to do it."

Primarily, the DST system was designed to reduce electricity use in buildings—but many prominent studies from the 1970s to today have proven we get little if any benefits from the practice. According to some experts, we waste much more energy than we save. Gas consumption, for example, always goes up, something the gas industry has known since the 1930s. "Every time the government studies [DST], it turns out that we are really saving nothing when all is said and done," Michael Downing wrote in his seminal book Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.

There are other negative effects: traffic accidents tend to spike the first Monday after daylight saving time. Chronobiologists have argued that people are essentially "jet-lagged" for a few days after. Some studies have shown that ending DST would help reduce the risk of seasonal depression. A recent Mayo Clinic study found that DST could lead to "an increase in medical errors" because of sleep-deprived healthcare workers. And even cows apparently get depressed and give less milk in the days after DST!

Santabarbara adds that local businesses have complained about the time shift as well: "They see the productivity does go down because of this time change—and when you look at the energy savings, according to the reports I've read, it's very little compared to the health effects, compared to productivity, compared to people's wellbeing, people's sleep habits, people's general mood. There's a lot of impact that this has on our community."

So Santabarbara's bill allows New York to form an agreement with other Eastern states—including Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—that instead of "falling back" in November, we enjoy DST year-round.

It's not that simple of course: Congress first has to repeal the 1960s bill which established the DST system before states are allowed to make their own decision. But he hopes legislation like this pushes Congress to act and inspires other states to draft their own laws.

"I think by getting more states on board and passing bills like this, I think we send a message that there's more states that want to do this, and maybe this will encourage other states that maybe haven't considered this yet to enact legislation like this as well," he said.

This isn't the only piece of legislation in play: earlier this year, a group of bipartisan U.S. legislators led by Sen. Marco Rubio proposed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would similarly make DST our permanent time. Rubio's office recently told WESH that the bill has been referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and the ball is in their court now to review it.

You might be wondering how we got to this point. Surely DST has always existed and always will? It might be instructive to offer a brief history of all things DST to understand just how convoluted this all is.

The origins of DST are as perplexing as the reasons behind its continued use, and many people have been credited with either inventing or popularizing the concept for quite different reasons.

Benjamin Franklin is often considered the first person to suggest the idea, and indeed, he did write about it in 1784 while he was living in Paris. He was mainly interested in conserving candles—he estimated 64 million pounds of wax, equivalent to $200 million today, could be saved in a six month period if people started their days at sunrise. But the most important thing to know about this is that it was a satirical piece. Franklin was JOKING, and hundreds of years later, we all took that joke seriously.

New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson argued in favor of it in 1895 so he could study insects longer during daylight hours. In the early 1900s, British builder William Willett came up with a very confusing plan to not waste sunlight by changing the clocks, by 20 minutes each, on four Sundays in September and four Sundays in April.

The major reason why countries in Europe finally started to adopt the DST system was to conserve coal during WWI. It briefly got adopted in the U.S. in 1918, though a major reason why President Woodrow Wilson was so in favor of it was, because he was a golf enthusiast, he could get more hours on the green. Congress immediately abolished it after the war, but New York City decided to continue observing it. The suburbs outside of NYC did not, which understandably caused some serious confusion.

DST was then instituted year-round in the country by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940s during WWII—but back then, it was known as "War Time." Then from 1945 to 1966, there was no federal law on DST, so each locality could choose whether or not to adopt it. It was only in 1966 that President Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Uniform Time Act to try to get all the states on the same page, which is what led to the system we're used to today.

Like many politicians today, President Richard Nixon wanted to turn Daylight Saving Time into permanent time, but during a brief trial period, it was scuttled (one reason given was because of the fear that children might get hit by cars in the dark while headed to school).

At that point, it was a pretty even six month split between the two time periods, but that changed in the 1980s because of lobbying from the golf industry and the barbecue grill and charcoal industries, who argued "they gain $200 million in sales with an extra month of daylight saving—and they were among the biggest lobbies in favor of extending DST from six to seven months in 1986," said Michael Downing, who wrote the seminal book on DST.

For now, we remain tethered to the invisible chain of time (unless you live in the enlightened states of Hawaii or Arizona, which don't partake in this whole chronological do-si-do). Don't forget to check your smoke detectors on Sunday. And when in doubt, just channel your inner Jonah Ryan.