When Does Daylight Saving Time Start in 2025?

Mark your calendars - it's nearly time for that yearly ritual of sacrificing an hour of sleep in the hope of lighter evenings. In 2025, Daylight Saving Time (DST) starts on Sunday, March 9, at 2:00 a.m. That's when we'll all move our clocks forward an hour, transforming 2 a.m. into 3 a.m. in what seems like time travel's shortest jump.

The Birth of Clock Changing

As widely perceived, we cannot hold Benjamin Franklin responsible for this twice-a-year clock shift. Although he did write a satirical essay proposing that the Parisians could conserve candles by rising earlier, it was George Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist who wished to have more daylight hours to pursue his hobby of catching insects, that originally proposed the contemporary practice of DST. It was initially adopted countrywide by Germany in 1916, during World War I, as a means to conserve power.

The United States climbed aboard in 1918, but we've had an on-again, off-again affair with DST ever since. During World War II, the nation observed year-round DST, or "War Time." After the war, cities and states were allowed to begin and end DST at their own discretion - picture the havoc that wreaked on transportation schedules!

Why We Still Do This