Sundays are the coffee creme of the week. Nobody even pretends to enjoy them and they are always left till last, usually shared with people you don’t really like.
Sunday was invented in 1173 by Roger de Caustic, third and notoriously acrimonious abbot of Fountains Abbey. De Caustic had discovered some of the lay brothers – who tended the abbey’s award winning flock and made sure the professional praying class got their habits washed – were brewing unregulated grog, getting drunk on Saturday night and making merry with the sheep. “Lascivious wassailing and most evil desporting with the innocent lamb,” as was reported in the local newspaper, The Daily Maleficent. De Caustic decided to tackle the outbreak of carnal revelry by strictly imposing a rule of silence, sobriety and six hours of self-improvement for the unwashed rabble, supervised by their moral betters and educational superiors.
The idea became viral and by the mid-thirteenth century the church had cornered the Sunday market in sanctimonious gloom right across Western Europe.
In the Middle Ages Sunday became known as “the day of rest”. This was mainly because capitalism hadn’t really got going and there was yet no entertainment industry to help fill the existential chasm that yawns once there is no field to plow or sheep to watch. There just wasn’t that much else to do besides rest and going to church. Life was simple. People weren’t happy but at least they knew their place in the great chain of being. On Sunday their place was on a pew. Listening to a man with bad hygiene and worse dress sense tell them about the rewards in heaven, the mediaeval equivalent of a lottery campaign.
The industrial revolution was a paradigm shift for Sunday. Soon after the Act of Enclosure was passed and people started to pour into the new towns and cities, Sunday was put out for competitive tendering by Benjamin Disraeli and the church lost its monopoly. From about 1865 the labouring masses had a choice how they were allowed to spend their day off. Museums, art galleries and great public libraries sprang up in every major metropolitan centre; silence, sobriety, and six hours of self-improvement were successfully rebranded as bourgeois values.
Art, culture and learning – or rather the art, culture and learning of the privileged few – were together a fabulous means of keeping the masses distracted, in check and safely away from getting ideas above their station. Sundays were for people like us to spectate and soak up the ideological representations of the people in charge. Nobody was really happy but at least a few of us got to see Tutankhamen and dinosaur bones and stuff from Greece. Which must have been nice.
Things changed again in the 1980’s when Sunday trading laws were changed. Sunday would never be the same. Now there would be a million and one ways somebody, somewhere could turn a profit by subjecting the ticket buying masses to cultural torpor. Two possible benefits of this new regime are that firstly, the pubs are now open all day so at least we can dull the pain with drink; secondly, art, culture and learning has gone all participatory and interactive. Am I the only person to see a casual link between these two facts? What chance does a room of squiffily painted waterlilies stand against a slot machine with a fifty quid payout and a pint of Leeds Best? I think we all know the answer to that.
Anyway, what’s everyone doing today?
I’m off to Leeds Pride. So, see some of you later.
During the gloom of a rainy day I’m going to iron mountains of laundry whilst watching old recordings of ‘Songs of Praise’.
and that’s what it’s all about Ivor.
Oh, you boys, what are you like? My usual Sunday is great. I sleep til I want (10 or 11 usually) and then make it up as I go along. Today gardening while it sunshined, now watching it chuck down with rain (I like extreme weather), whilst also watching some skinny lasses run round London. Might eat some nice stuff and on Sunday my usual 6pm rule for wine doesn’t apply. Who knows, I might get all participatory too and write summat later.
There’s a rule for wine? Bloody good job it isn’t a law else I’d be a fugitive from justice.
Got caught in that rain along with a couple of hundred people in rainbow wigs, which was an odd experience.
Ahoy, Captain Kir…by!
Greetings from sunny Seacroft.
What can I say about Sundays apart from ” I LOVE THEM!”? Well…
As a kid I used to go out adventuring on a Sunday.
Hours were spent sliding down hills on open cardboard boxes, picking blackberries, building dens, making and crashing go-karts, riding bikes, paddling in streams, picnicing, daytripping and reading in my tent in the back garden.
Now as a serious adult I go to church every Sunday – If I nod off in the sermon nobody cares or notices (I’m the preacher!) and after church my home is filled with family and food.
If there are any spare hours left I fall back into my childhood ways, I’m still up for a roly-poly race in the park or an ice-cream and a garden hose fight 🙂
Great news – It is SUNDAY again tomorrow! *Does the happy dance*
Greetings from a rather cloudy Beeston.
That sounds pretty much how I spent Sundays as a kid too, but don’t you think it’s changed an awful lot?
The only people I’ve seen recently picking blackberries were Polish and the kids I was with were aghast they were actually eating the fruit off the bush. They’d never even considered that you could get food any other place than the supermarket.
I don’t think kids build dens any more and the thought of them using cardboard to slide down a hill probably wouldn’t occur to them, which is a bit sad.
You are right about the churches though. Round here Sunday is a riot of colour and singing and sharing food … or at least it is for our immigrant neighbors who still seem to see Sunday as something special, a time to stop everything and simply celebrate. It’s lovely to watch, but sadly I don’t feel part of it.
Thanks for commenting, by the way, and for not taking my remarks too seriously.
And what’s the theme of tomorrows sermon, dare I ask?
I’ve only just read your reply, so my apologies for my late response.
Last Sunday’s sermon was about not being selfish. Today’s is about remembering your past and learning lessons from it to share with others.
It is Sunday again and sunny again – I’m having a BBQ for lunch and my grandson is visiting – Hooray for Super Seacroft Sundays.
Have a great day – Pete.
Not being selfish? … that would make an interesting blog post.
Enjoy your bbq, and the sunshine … and Sunday in Seacroft.