Author Archives: James

Clocks turn back an hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday, marking the beginning of standard time for the next few months.

This means that this weekend will be an hour longer than normal, but it will get dark an hour earlier in the evenings.

Standard time will be used through March 8, when clocks will “spring” forward an hour to begin Daylight Saving Time.

Ironically, standard time is no longer the norm. About two-thirds of the days during the year now operate on Daylight Saving Time.

Daylight Saving Time now begins on the second Sunday of March each year and ends on the first Sunday of November.

DST has roots tracing to 1918 in the United States, though not all places always observed it. Currently, it is not used in Hawaii and most of Arizona.

There’s a reason the holiday is later than usual this year, and it dates back to 1939 when Franklin Roosevelt decided to shake up the tradition a bit in the name of capitalism.

Thanksgiving had been celebrated on the last Thursday of the month since the time of Abraham Lincoln. But, according to TIME, during 1939, the calendar had been unusual, as the month started on a Wednesday, so there were five Thursdays as opposed to four.

To restore some order, Roosevelt moved the national holiday to the second-to-last Thursday of the month (a change that many were unhappy with). Instead of focusing on the negative, Roosevelt attempted to justify his decision with a pro-shopping response: merchants would now have a holiday further from Christmas to allow for more shopping time. In a way, this birthed the consumer craze known as Black Friday nearly 80 years ago.

See all of Josh’s past costumes here.