Regional Nap Accreditation Board Certifies the Extra Hour as ‘a Legitimate Nap’

The Regional Nap Accreditation Board voted 7-2 on Friday to formally certify the extra hour gained on November 1 as “a legitimate nap,” ending decades of uncertainty about whether sleeping through the repeated 2 a.m. counts as rest or merely as confusion.

“This is the board’s most significant ruling since 2019, when we certified the Sunday afternoon couch nap as a protected activity,” said board chair Dr. Willa Hammond, whose credentials include a doctorate in sleep science and what she described as “extensive field research.” “The extra hour is sixty minutes that did not exist before. If you sleep through it, that is a nap. If you sleep through it twice, that is, technically, two naps.”

The accreditation establishes official standards for the November 1 nap. To qualify, the nap must begin after the first 2 a.m., last no fewer than 20 minutes, and involve “a blanket, a dim room, or a socially acceptable excuse.” Naps taken on the couch score higher than naps taken at the desk, which the board classified as “rest-adjacent.”

Dissenting board member Gary Pritchard argued that certifying the hour would encourage “nap inflation.” “Today it’s one extra hour,” Pritchard said. “Tomorrow people will be napping through time zones. I have seen the future, and it is horizontal.”

The board also released its annual nap census, finding that the average resident naps 47 times per year but reports only 12, “out of what researchers called ‘nap shame.'” The fall-back, Dr. Hammond said, offers a rare shame-free window. “Nobody can judge you for napping during an hour that happened twice,” she said. “The hour itself is confused. You are allowed to be confused lying down.”

Local resident Tom Wexler, 44, said he planned to use the certification. “I’m going to frame it,” Wexler said. “I’m going to put it on the fridge next to the bedtime audit notice. November is going to be the most documented month of rest in this household’s history.”