So That’s What Happened to the Clock on the Computer
On Monday, I was briefly puzzled as to why the clock on my computer was one hour slow: Wasn’t it time to fall back to regular time next weekend? Why were we still on Daylight Saving Time?
Now I know that it is all because of the candy and chocolate making industries which (per today’s New York Times) have been taking a hit in sale because of “hysteria around the myth of candy poisoning” and “increased concerns about child abduction brought on by photos of missing kids on milk cartons.” Notes the New York Times:
The candy lobby also played a significant role in pushing Halloween into daylight saving time, believing that extra hour of trick-or-treating in daylight would spur more candy sales but arguing that it would decrease deaths, according to Michael Downing, the author of the Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, an amusing book about the myths and realities behind daylight saving time.
I see: The candy industry is making a correlation between “more candy sold” and “more time trick or treating.” For myself, what determines how much candy I buy is based solely on how many children live around us: In our old town, bands of 30 or so children would appear at the door (in something of an exaggeration of the “safety in numbers” principle) and many bags were duly bought and handed out. Our current neighbors are all retirees or without children; one neighbor stopped me yesterday as Charlie was getting off the bus and told me to be sure to bring him by, as no one had knocked in years.
We are lowkeying Halloween, as we do with most holidays; the changes in routine unsettle Charlie and I suspect he senses the excitement and unrest of the other kids at his school, and is made even more anxious. The change in the clocks alone can really throw him off, as his sleep patterns and when it is light and dark are affected.
Trick or treat all the time, isn’t it?
Photo courtesy of Minnywall via Flickr.
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POSTED IN: Food and Diet, Holidays, Time
30 opinions for So That’s What Happened to the Clock on the Computer
KimJ
Oct 31, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I have never lived in a neighborhood with a lot of trick or treaters, so we’ve always bought the same amount and it always gets finished off by us. And I always buy my favorite candy, Hershey Bars.
KC'sMommy
Oct 31, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Happy Halloween Charlie and Co.
Justthisguy
Oct 31, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Oh, man! Two of my pet peeves are the so-called “Daylight Saving Time” and the way Hallowe’en is done these days. If people want to get up an hour earlier in the Summer, they can just remember to get up an hour earlier in the Summer! As Heinlein said, DST is like trying to make a string longer by cutting a piece off of one end and tying it on the other.
Hallowe’en was ruined when little kids started going out with their parents. If yer not old enough to go out by yourself and scare *me*, the householder, I feel no need to bribe you not to do dirty tricks which you don’t have the gumption to do, anyway
Daisy
Oct 31, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Amigo likes to hand out the candy. We had to remind him to be more generous, and then to define generous. He was holding rigidly to “Two pieces” for each child, even though we had plenty of candy.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 31, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Charlie loves the idea of going out in the evening, then freezes at the thought of walking up to strange doors—until he realized he did not actually have to enter the houses.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 31, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Justthisguy, Halloween around here seems to have become thoroughly “sanitized”—many kids going to parties and trick or treating in the afternoon, definitely with parents. Alternately, it seems to have become another day for older students to take a holiday, especially the day after.
Justthisguy
Oct 31, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I remember the time I was minding an old-lady-neighbor’s house, about nine years ago when she was out of town.
Hallowe’en ocurred then, and I was prepared, with bowls of candy.
The first group of trick’or treaters were a bunch of girls, apparently 14 years old, or thereabouts, and I asked them (sorta) just what kind of tricks they were intending, that I should give them treats not to do so?
They ran away, screaming.
A bit later, some boys of about the same age came by, wearing dark clothing (not silly costumes) on bicycles with all reflective things carefully removed.
I was a bit frightened of them, that they might actually do some “tricks.”
I gave to them generously from the candy bowl.
That’s OK, I think, for one night per year, and one night per year only.
Hmm. I must go find a Porta-Potty to tip over.
Bonus if somebody is in it
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 1, 2007 at 12:27 am
Not much mischief around here—someone TP’d a tree but only with one stream of paper, after which the whole roll was cast aside on the ground.
Estee
Nov 1, 2007 at 10:16 am
It’s pretty low key around here too. I dressed up Adam, we went for a walk around the block and to his favorite Halloween house, and back again. He is happy enough with that, and I’m okay with it. If he didn’t want Halloween at all, I would be okay with that too. He appeases my need to put him in the monkey suit I did (it was a monkey costume — a kind of mockery of myself and the whole rigamarole), but also because I call him my little monkey.
I watched the other children — their “greed” as they had to have more candy. More and more and more candy. I listened outside as older kids smashed pumpkins all along our street. I mean, Adam has candy at home. He loves lollipops. He has one, he doesn’t finish it and he’s pretty happy. Why, I imagine him thinking, must he go to other houses and dress up in a monkey suit just to get MORE candy? Why do kids make such a fuss, and then damage everything in their wake?
And now I sigh. We have it all, don’t we? At least that’s the way I feel. A child who is happy with what he has, not greedy at all. Not less of a child with natural desires, but certainly one I am very happy with — with or without the chaos of Halloween.
HeatherS
Nov 1, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Justthisguy, your idea of Halloween just frightens me. I like Halloween because it allows us to make light of our darker fears, the mysteries surrounding death, ghosts, monsters and the like. It gives a chance to express darker sides of our characters in a friendly and safe way. I would not like it if a pack of darkly attired teen-aged thugs appeared at my doorstep, Halloween or otherwise.
We take our kids to the local mall, where it is well lit and temperature controlled and many people can “ooh” and “aah” over the costumes. We always make our own costumes, which always get a good reaction. We also take them to a few houses in our neighborhood, where we know the occupants, or those who have set up elaborate Halloween decorations.
Before last year, we didn’t get the impression that our boy (autistic, 6 years old this year) cared about Halloween one way or another. He is a VERY selective eater, but he likes chocolate, so we liked that he could share in a “typical” kid experience by filling up on sugar one night a year. But last year, he expressed a very high level of interest in his costume (”Woody” from Toy Story - his little sister was “Jesse”) both before and after Halloween. He constantly browses through photos of last Halloween and when he saw his costume for this year, he became very excited and has refused to take it off any time he’s worn it. We’ve had to wait for him to fall asleep before we could remove it.
Last night, he wanted nothing more than to go back outside, presumably for more trick-or-treating, although he probably would have been just as happy to look at the pumpkins and/or blow out their candles, or to simply walk around the block again. Anything to be outside, light or dark. We had a hard time with opening the doors for trick-or-treaters once we got back home because of our boy’s desire to run outside at every opportunity.
We seem to have the opposite problem with him as you have with Charlie, Kristina. Our boy doesn’t seem to care about routine one way or another. Weekends and school vacations are no problem, as long as he can sit in front of a computer or jump on a trampoline or just bounce around the house, he’s happy. He doesn’t sit well at all at restaurants, but is otherwise generally pretty excited about the prospect of going “out”.
Regan
Nov 1, 2007 at 7:45 pm
We had a super Halloween with not so many preteens like in past years, but lot of the 5-and-unders (cute), taking advantage of daylight savings time. Some of them started out so early that they caught me out raking leaves and I had to rush in to rip open a bag of Smarties.
Eleanor went out as a pirate with her big sister, and while she may still be more tolerant of another weird thing out of the ordinary than excited about dressing up, at least the costume was not scratchy. The “trick or treat” practice we did paid off well, the girls came home, split the loot and ate candy until all agreed it was quite enough :-).
Justthisguy
Nov 2, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Heather, I didn’t like it either, but both parties adhered to the old traditional pardigm. I don’t think those kids were thugs so much as rowdy boys who nonetheless understood the traditional limits and conditions. Sometimes let me tell you my Dad’s story about his and his adolescent cronies’ greasing of the streetcar tracks in Atlanta, on Hallowe’en, back in the ‘twenties.
Oh, and my Dad was always famously prissy and goody-goody, at least in my lifetime. Maybe from a guilty conscience? (snerk.)
Justthisguy
Nov 2, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Umm, that’s “paradigm”, dammit!
Justthisguy
Nov 2, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Oh, I think I recall reading at Mc’ewen’s latest post, that some of the commenters assured her that what she thought was weird autistic behavior in her boys was, in reality, just ordinary stupid (or maybe smart,but nonetheless fun) boy tricks.
laurentius-rex
Nov 2, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Heinlein was so right wasn’t he?
Very useful way to lengthen string is that, cos when you need the bit on one end you stick it on the other, isn’t that the principle of escalators and caterpillar tracks?
Justthisguy
Nov 2, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Thank you Larry for veering this thread back onto the other topic, as I think we may have beaten the other other topic nearly to death, and yes I admit to dealing some nasty kicks, so to speak.
Now that we are all more or less connected in real time, around the globe, why can’t we stop the unnaturally crazy so-called “daylight saving” time? Hell, zone time is bad enough. If I were King, I’d issue everrbody a wristwatch with two dials; one irrevocably synchronized to Zulu, or GMT, or CUT, or whatever they call it these days, and the other would be settable by the owner to local mean (or even apparent) Solar Time.
I get *so* tired of explaining to people that noon is not the same as 12m!
I mean, even *I* go out in the daylight sometimes, and might notice the sun angle, and compare it with a watch
Club 166
Nov 2, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Heinlein may have been right, in one sense.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the saddest day of the year for me will come this coming weekend, when the clocks change.
I have a job where I get up really early to go to work, so it’s always dark in the winter, daylight savings time or not. When I get off, though, there’s still a bit of light left during daylight savings time. Once the clocks change, it’ll be going to work in the dark, and coming home in the dark.
And I don’t set my own work schedule, so it’s not like I can just adjust my hours.
Joe
Justthisguy
Nov 2, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Gladdest day of the year for me, Club.
I might get a good night’s sleep.
There’s absolutely no reason for people who work indoors under artificial light to observe DST, nor for those who work outdoors under natural light to do so. The Germans started the crazy practice during the Great War, when factories were mostly still lit by windows.
It’s perpepuated these days by control-freaks, who used to be known as Progressives, or “Pwogs” when they were Republicans. These days the Mommy-State pwogs seem to be mostly Democrats, but there is a gracious plenty of Republican busibodies left over from a hundred years ago.
I betcha Hillary would have been a Republican a hundred years ago; back then a large number of Democrats still believed in liberty, in spite of Bryan.
Oh, where is Grover Cleveland, now that we really need him
Justthisguy
Nov 2, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Oh, and DST favors “morning people.”
Sorry if you are one, and I’d not lift a finger to harm a hair on your head, but if I were to read that you were squashed flat by a railroad locomotive, or eaten alive by sharks or tigers, or even just missed meeting your sweety because, well, you got up early in the morning, I’m afraid I would giggle a bit, and think, “Ha, serves’im right!”
All the bad things happen in the morning. Armies always attack at dawn. People are always stood up against a wall and shot at dawn. Schoolteachers now want teenagers, who really need to sleep instead, to show up at school at dawn.
Unless yer working outdoors and need to make use of all possible daylight, Please Please Please stay in bed and get some rest
Justthisguy
Nov 2, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Oh, Club, what about people who might like their extra daylight before working hours, instead of afterwards?
Leave the clocks alone, and negotiate working and shopping hours case by case, not all corporate-statefully!
OK, I’ll stop now. Sorry about the ranting, Miss C.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 2, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Just this guy, I guess it’s possible that kids may one day (if not already) ask why they say “trick or treat”!
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 2, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Estée, I’ve had your comment on my mind since yesterday evening—–I really know what you mean. A friend at work told me that her 10 year old had brought home an entire pillowcase stuffed with candy—–she had more, too, left over from her own house and was offering it to all the students and to us.
Charlie on the other hand: What made him most excited on Wednesday was when I told him that we had to do “trick or treat” and that Jim would come home early—-he was very excited and that excitement lasted through us getting caught in standstill traffic on the highway and then having to drive all over town to pick up Jim at the train. Charlie only did a few houses—he liked walking on the street at night with us—he shied away from standing at the doors. We only trick or treated a row of condos almost all of whose residents are recently immigrated from India or China; it was a very calm Halloween. Charlie ate none of his candy (he’s not really into most kinds of candy, as it is) and enjoyed having “Dad home early.”
KimJ
Nov 2, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Kristina, this was my son’s first year trick or treating at houses. We probably live in one of Tucson’s worst neighborhoods but the traffic was scarier than the crime on the 31st. He did one small block and had lots of fun. I’ve been eating all his rejects (a lot) with many of them opened and tasted.
laurentius-rex
Nov 3, 2007 at 12:11 pm
The day began at dawn
And went on till it ended
And if it had not done
Then who would be offended?
It’s all a matter of lattitude, there were some crazy notions to have a common European time a while back.
Well do you know why great Tom in Oxford begins tolling at 5 past nine?
Because that is 9 o clock by Oxford sun time.
It was the railways and the industrial age that standardised time. Factory hooter time not rise and shine time.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 3, 2007 at 2:03 pm
What might we do without the digital clock…….
Making the Count (or, What’s So Standard About Standard Time?)
Nov 3, 2007 at 5:53 pm
[…] been a discussion going on in the comments to my post on So That’s What Happened to the Clock on the Computer (aka a post on Halloween and trick or treating). The discussion has been about Daylight Saving […]
Justthisguy
Nov 4, 2007 at 4:29 am
What King Larry said, with which I concur wholeheartedly.
Justthisguy
Nov 4, 2007 at 4:36 am
Say, Ma’am, did you see that email I sent you? I dunno if you thought it was silly and not worth responding to, or if it got caught in your spam trap.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 4, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I think the SPAM trap! Could you resend it? Sorry—- Trick or treating, and the whole notion of getting candy/food from strangers, seems to be going by the wayside around here. Most kids seems to go to parties or to go in full daylight—not the same.
Justthisguy
Nov 5, 2007 at 2:00 am
OK, I’ll resend. It’ll have a time stamp a minute or so later than this comment.
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