Numbering our days

I may be getting cranky, but shopping for calendars has become an occasion to gripe. For several years I’ve purchased weekly planners (or Day-Timers) that take the word “weekend” literally and put Saturday and Sunday together at the end of every one-week double-page spread. The typical format allows Monday through Friday a full rectangle, while crowding the other two days together in the last space. I started wondering when this happened, so I checked my last 15 years of planners and found almost all of them put Sunday at the end of the weekly pages. Sunday is still first (usually) on the full-month calendar pages. But not always—the pocket calendar I keep in my purse starts the week on Monday, which always throws me off.

Is Sunday the first day of the week or not? I did a little research and discovered that the industrial revolution gave rise to the term “weekend” (first used in the 1870s), which shuffled Sunday to the end of the line. In 1988, the International Organization for Standardization published IOS 8601, declaring Monday to be the official first day of the week. No one seems to question whether the IOS has the authority to do this, or even question who or what the IOS is. But the ruling makes practical sense, as Monday is the back-to-work day for most of the world (except in Muslim countries, where the work week begins on Sunday). But like most utilitarian measures, it appears to reduce humans to their … well, utility. I resent the calendar hinting at me that the chief end of man is what he does for a living.

In the beginning, God set the sun and moon in place “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14). In the beginning He established a seven-day week and determined the order of days. He didn’t name the days, which over time acquired the monikers of pagan gods: Odin (or Wōden), Thor, and Freya of the Vikings, and Saturn of the Romans. The sun was a pagan god for many ancient cultures, likewise the moon. But for the first day of the week to be named for the sun is more than a coincidence.

On the first day of the week, light was created. On the first day of the week, the light of the world burst out of the tomb that couldn’t hold Him. On the first day of the week, we celebrate that light, in a day not just for resting and contemplating, but also for rejoicing. Pushing Sunday into the weekend may not be a cause of cultural decline, but it’s a symptom. It tells us that Sunday is a catch-up day for everything we didn’t get done during prime time—maybe even, depending on the season, a day to indulge in a little sun worship. Call me cranky, but after years of Day-Timing from Monday, I’m willing to take a little extra effort to find a calendar that puts Sunday where it belongs.