After a long night of trick-or-treating and perhaps staying up late to indulge in the spoils or attend a Halloween party, there’s a built-in reprieve: The end of daylight saving time means we get an extra hour to sleep this weekend.
It’s no coincidence that the time change comes after the holiday. Up until about two decades ago, daylight saving time ended the last Sunday in October rather than the first Sunday in November, as it does now. That would make sunset an hour earlier, meaning less daylight for kids to go door-to-door.
Daylight saving time aims to save energy by shifting the clocks for part of the year to better align daylight with the times of day that people are working or at school. When (and if) the clocks change has been a debate for years, as lawmakers and advocates squabbled over the schedule.
Currently, the goal of many is to eliminate a disruptive twice-yearly clock change , but lawmakers in the early 2000s came up with a different fix: Move the dates that the clock changes by a few weeks.