“And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” – John 1:5 from the King James Bible

I have never been a wake-up-and-seize-the-day kind of person.

Wish I could be. Yet, most mornings I do manage to force myself to get up and walk our two high-energy, black Labrador retrievers through the neighborhood around the time the sun pulls itself over the horizon’s rim.

In January, however, those walks tend to start out in the murky pitch of predawn. These literal dark times only last a few weeks of winter, but the pups and I might soon be in for many more walks in midnight conditions.

Congress is considering legislation that would do away with standard time and would keep the country on daylight savings time year round.

Growing up only a few minutes away from a time zone border, this issue has always been of interest to me. I admit I am often jealous of our friends in west Georgia when Alabama’s winter sun sets before 5 p.m. on that lonesome standard time.

Since 1967, the vast majority of the country has switched back and forth between daylight savings and standard times every year. Current law does not allow a state to observe daylight savings time year round, but Hawaii, most of Arizona and the U.S. territories stay on standard time year round.

Most people do not seem to like having two time changes every year. A 2025 Gallup poll found only 19 percent of Americans prefer keeping our annual twofold time toggle.

My wife is not surprised by that statistic. She believes losing an hour of sleep every March should be deemed a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

What surprised me, though, is the same poll found moving to permanent DST to be only slightly more popular at 24 percent. Permanent standard time had double the support at 48 percent. Still, even that number is less than a majority.

So would switching to permanent DST be a good idea? We do have one example of the country trying out this policy in a non-wartime setting.

Congress passed a permanent DST law at the end of 1973, which went into effect on January 6, 1974. Andrew Beaujon, of the news website Washingtonian, shared parts of an article published in the Washington Post describing the conditions as children went to school on January 7.

The Post article stated the sun rose at 8:27 a.m. that day, and children were walking to bus stops carrying flashlights. Opponents of the change seized on an accident that occurred when a six-year-old girl suffered a broken leg after being struck by a car while walking to her elementary school.

Nevertheless, Beaujon’s research found that there was no significant difference in the number of deaths in the pre-dawn hours in the month of February, and the Federal Energy Administration noted that permanent DST had resulted in American energy savings in the first half of 1974 equaling between 20,000 to 30,000 tons of coal not being burned each day.

Yet, the New York Times reported support for permanent DST dropped from 79 percent to only 42 percent within the first few months of 1974, according to Beaujon.

As is so often the case with public opinion, the benefits of a policy change cease to matter if people are inconvenienced, and people just did not like being in the dark for that long in the morning. Congress and President Gerald Ford restored standard time for October 27 that same year.

Yahoo News reporter Mike Bebernes notes some research has shown changing the time biannually has a modest link to negative physical and mental health outcomes.

Changing to permanent DST might lead to small reductions in crime and energy use, but health researchers and physician groups believe permanent standard time would provide the higher level of health benefits, Bebernes reported.

No matter what Congress decides, some folks will not like it. The federal law would allow states to opt to remain on standard time only, but Alabama appears poised to go with permanent DST as the Legislature passed a bill in support of it in 2021.

I do not know if Alabama ultimately made the right or wrong choice, but I think I will enjoy getting home from work and not relying on streetlights to see where to unlock my front door.

I only ask that if you find yourself driving around the subdivisions of north Opelika early on a winter morning, please drive slowly and watch out for the half-asleep fellow being dragged around by a couple of frenetic pooches.