With daylight saving officially over today, many Australians begin the biannual tradition of feeling slightly confused and off-kilter after the clocks change.
But what if we dispensed with the ritual altogether?
Critics of daylight saving time say changing the clocks twice a year is bad for our health and can even lead to more car accidents.
Proponents of permanently winding the clocks forward claim it would actually prevent accidents, reduce crime, and decrease seasonal depression.
The debate is raging in America after the US Senate unexpectedly voted to make daylight saving time permanent from 2023.
While it still has several hurdles to clear to become law, the Sunshine Protection Act sailed through the senate with unanimous consent.
But there's one problem: The bill passed by accident.
Now Americans are divided between those who want the clocks set permanently to daylight saving time, those who want to stay on standard time all year, and those who want everything to stay the same.
OK, so how does a bill pass the US Senate by accident?
For a legislative chamber often criticised for being gridlocked, it came as a surprise that not only did a bill pass the US Senate swiftly, it passed unanimously.
The bill was sponsored by Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who has espoused the benefits of daylight saving for much of his career.
While passing a bill usually takes months or years, Senator Rubio used a quirky senate convention called an unanimous agreement to get it approved in just 14 seconds.
Under the rules, any senator can go to the floor and ask for unanimous consent for a bill, and it immediately goes to a vote.
If just one member of the senate objects, the bill is dead. But this time, Senator Rubio got lucky.
While some senators said they were far too busy to worry about it, others said they had no idea the bill was even on the floor.
"It's literally an issue my staff and I had never discussed, and they made an assumption that I don't really care about daylight saving time," Senator Chris Coons told BuzzFeed News.
Senator Rubio was unapologetic about his gambit.
"The good news is if we can get this passed, we don't have to keep doing this stupidity anymore," he said.
"Pardon the pun, but this is an idea whose time has come."
What happens to daylight saving in America now?
Marco Rubio wants the Sunshine Protection Act passed by the House of Representatives and signed into law by President Joe Biden at the end of next year.
That, he claims, would give airlines and train networks time to adjust their schedules.
If successful, every US state would set their clocks an hour ahead in November 2023.
Sun-drenched Arizona and Hawaii, which never adopted daylight saving time in the first place, would stay on standard time.
But the bill is already being met with suspicion in the lower house, particularly among members of congress from the country's mid-west.
The sun wouldn't rise over Montana, North Dakota and Michigan until as late as 9:30am if daylight saving were being observed in winter.
"How are people going to feel at 7am [in winter], when they put their kids out on the street to catch the school bus, and it's dead, flat dark?" mused House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
"In any event, I don't have strong feelings either way.
A poll from 2019 showed that 70 per cent of Americans were in favour of ending the switch between daylight saving and standard time.
But they're deeply divided on what exactly should happen instead.
Only 30 per cent wanted daylight saving time to be made permanent, while 40 per cent preferred standard time.
For everyone, it seems to comes down to one question: Are you a morning person who wants sunshine at the start of your day, or do you prefer more daylight hours at the day's end?
America has actually been here before
Americans have experimented with permanent daylight saving before.
It turned out that most of them hated it.
In 1974, America was gripped by an energy crisis, and then-President Richard Nixon decided an experiment was in order to see if they could drive down fuel consumption.
He ordered permanent daylight saving time for at least two years.
But days after the experiment began, people began to complain.
"It's the end," one woman told the New York Times on January 8, 1974.
With some American children carrying torches to school, and public support for the law cratering from 79 per cent to 42 per cent, the experiment was ended a year early.
Senator Rubio insists there would be a simple solution to keep permanent daylight saving popular this time, but it involves another divisive social issue.
He says America should just start the school day later.
"We start school in this country at the worst possible time for adolescents," he said.
