Sunday - ending or beginning?

"Time flows in a strange way on Sundays" Haruki Murakami

This year's Met diary has disoriented me somewhat because it begins its week with Sunday. In years gone by, and my feeling is, almost everywhere, mostly we think of Monday as the first day of the week. And the Met has previously followed that tradition. I am now into the third week of my diary, and I have only just adjusted to the fact that the day that says Saturday on the page, is not Sunday. To explain - for example - my son and family are coming to dinner tonight - Sunday and I always knew that it was to be Sunday - and yet, initially I wrote it in my diary on the Saturday because it was the last day of the week on that page. Of course, as I wake I still know which day it is - well more or less - I'm very old - but the diary thing has really confused me a bit, and as a result made me think about whether Sunday is, in fact the beginning of the week, not the end. A bit like - is that a sunrise or a sunset in the picture above? I know it's a bit of a stretch and yet, I do think it encapsulates some of my discombobulation. (lovely word)

Now the Bible has God resting on the last day - and we who have been raised in a Christian world therefore recognise that this means Sunday. Other religions do not and the fact that we do is mostly down to the Emperor Constantine according to AI - who - alas, as always says it the most clearly:

"Sunday became the designated rest day due to a blend of early Christian practices celebrating Jesus' resurrection on the "Lord's Day," Roman Emperor Constantine's 321 AD edict making it a civil day of rest (the "Venerable Day of the Sun"), and the desire to accommodate new converts from sun worship by aligning with their sacred day."

Obviously I am not a good enough Christian - well I was at least raised as one - to remember that Jesus did in fact rise from the day on a Sunday.

Constantine was a man ahead of his time because it wasn't until the nineteenth century that a rest day was allowed for the working man, and the 20th century for a whole weekend, or at least a partial one. And of course, there are some people - farmers, those dedicated makers of Parmigiano Reggiano in Sant'Antonio that I visited all those years ago ... - who never get a day off. And on those allowed rest days people were generally expected to go to church.

Nevertheless it was indeed a day to celebrate a bit of time off, and a proper meal - the Sunday roast - in England - generally eaten at lunchtime after church. Of course what is eaten at that meal varies from country to country, but I do remember that in France it was often a roast as well. Followed by a patisserie from the shop. It was also a day of leisure - immortalised in Seurat's La Grande Jatte in which Parisian working people are shown relaxing on the banks of the Seine.

But why a week at all? I knew roughly why we have a year of 365 days and how the months came into being, along with their names. Even why a day is 24 hours, and so on. But why is a week seven days? Well, that, it seems is down to the Babylonians who even showed the planets circling the sun:

"When it comes to the number of days in a week, and weeks in a month, it seems we have the Babylonians to thank again. For them, the number ‘7’ held a particular significance, observing as keen astronomers, that there were seven celestial bodies in sky – the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Through their lunar calendar, which tracked the transitional phases of the moon, they also calculated that it took approximately 28 or 29 days for the moon to complete its full lunar cycle. This period (give or take a few ‘transitional’ days) became a ‘month’, and, divided into four equal parts, produced seven-day ‘weeks’." St. Neots Museum

All of which is interesting, even amazing. One wonders why for centuries after the Sumerians everyone thought the earth was at the centre. But this is not intended to be an astronomy lecture.

So OK the weekend - in Western societies at least - has been established - although it is entirely possible that that too is in a moment of great change. COVID launched massive changes in the way that people now work. and in spite of a slow drift back to the office, some of it compulsory, many will continue to work more on the days that it suits them. They might even create their own weekend in the middle of the week. There is also talk of 4 day weeks, with those 4 days being longer, so that they can be at home on more days. Of course there are some jobs that need to be done every day but that's a flexible thing too. Somebody else can do the job on the days that you do not - and vice versa.

It's not happened yet, however, and so here I am - someone who no longer works, and so the days merge into each other - and yet some things still tend to happen only at weekends. Partly, of course, this is due to the fact that others with whom we engage whether remotely or up close as it were, are still working at a paid job. Children still go to school Monday to Friday as do most workers and so the world adjusts to them - because they are the majority.

So is Sunday an ending or a beginning? Officially it's the ending. Did you know that in 1946 The Inernational Organisation for Standardisation was set up and they decreed Monday as the beginning of the week - mostly because of the domination of the business week which began on Monday? And in spite of America being the home of business if you like - they apparently do not recognise or belong to the IOS and go for Sunday. Which might explain my current diary. Although why previously did the Met go for Monday instead? Were they going with the flow, and now the Donald has decreed they should stick to Sunday?

The argument for Sunday is that it is a day for planning - which might include hoping or as one Bob Saget says "Sundays are a good day to look at the limitless possibilities of the week ahead." Although he does add the caveat that "The key is to prolong that feeling by not reading the news." which is similar to a sentiment from a blogger who writes LIfe with Leaha that: "Sunday has always been a day that is less likeable as it goes along."

It seems that at least for now I shall have to learn to live with Sunday as a beginning, at least as far as organisation is concerned. Nevertheless I suspect my head will continue to see it as an end to a week - maybe with some contemplation of pleasures - or doctor's appointments to come, but yes - an ending. It's weird however when it comes to the diary. I used to turn over the page on Monday morning to be greeted by a new picture, a view of anything due to happen that week, and the writing down of my feeble aims for the week - 4 walks, 7 blogs 1 fast - well that's the aim - not always achieved. It really doesn't seem right doing that on Sunday.

"The sun rises at the beginning of the day, therefore 'Sun-day' should be the beginning of the week." - Carl, Humpty Doo/ABC

Well - Van Gogh called this painting Wheatfield with Rising Sun and doubtless it was, but if we didn't know that, surely it could just as easily be a sunset. Is a sunrise yellow and a sunset red? Is yellow hope and red exhaustion?

THE FRIDGE

Leftover chicken now almost gone - good. However, there are some leftovers of the curry I made with it, and moreover I had hoped to use up the jar of curry paste, but there was too much in the jar. So no progress really. Today I am more hopeful. But then it's Sunday.

YEARS GONE BY

January 11

2025 - Nothing

2024 - Nothing

2023 - By the way

2022 - Scrambled eggs

2021 - Missing

2020 - Filo pastry and how foods travel

2019 - An Australian success story and green banana flour

2018 - Coconut water

2017 - So many questions, so few answers