A curious thought came to mind the other day; Sunday is the
Christian Sabbath Day, the seventh day of the week and the day upon which YHWH
is believed to have rested. He took the day for himself, and later commanded
that his faithful (the Israelites) keep the Sabbath day holy. The Jewish
Shabbat and the Christian Sabbath have the same biblical sources, but with the
New Testament and the missionary period of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the dating
changes somewhat. We must also remember that the Jewish calendar year is
different from the Jewish festive calendar, as the first is the predominantly
Gregorian calendar and the latter is the lunar calendar. Lunar years are
typically shorter than the solar Gregorian calendar, as a month in lunar terms
is 28 days while the median Gregorian calendar month is 30 days duration. But
in essence, both Sabbath days are ‘8 days after the last day of Sabbath.” This
limits the Christian to a working week of Monday through Saturday.
In the United Kingdom, a modern Christian (although
increasingly atheistic or agnostic) commonwealth, the nominal ‘Weekend’
consists of (at most) Friday evening through to Monday morning, although with various groups working intermittently throughout those days. Of particular
note, though, is that Sunday is predominantly a day off, where only consumption
– rather than exertion – is practiced. Rest and relaxation are characteristic
of a Sunday, and the attitude is captured through turns-of-phrase such as “Sunday
dinner”, “Sunday Drivers”, or “Sunday papers.” The whole idea of Sunday is
rooted in personal ease of activity, of leisure, and contemplation. Typically,
the antithetical “Weekday Worker” may find they sleep through an
entire Sunday before returning to work the next day. The right to a week’s end
was enshrined in the Labour movement of unions in the post modern period. The
modern weekend is typically an amalgam of the Jewish and Christian days of
Sabbath observance, and is one of the pinnacle doctrines of worker’s rights in
Europe. The main gist of the teaching was popularised during the late period of
the Industrial Revolution, particularly after the promulgation of the Catholic
Social Teaching Rerum Novarum or On the Conditions of the Working Class.
You can say that it is from a Christian root, and with wholly religious
intentions, that the secular Weekend exists, and we all get a break. The labour
movement sealed the right, even in the wake of atheism and secularisation that
the workweek would definitely end for two days, the working class having always
been the most religiously adherent and numerous. Owners of businesses,
politicians, civil servants and financial workers would also take the holidays
at the end of the workweek, many carrying out their philanthropic activities
then. The working and lower middle classes would tend more toward leisure,
exercise and sport, and were afforded more mobility than before with trains and
mass transport nuances of the time. Characteristic Enlightment period
education, refinement and activities, such as reading, theatreship, riding and
music, as well as socialising among the community in clubs, public houses or
promenades, would be taken in on the weekends. Much of this tradition has
stayed with us to this day, as well as the honorific of Mass attendance.
So I began to ask myself; what would happen if a growing,
atheistic society became a strong, and decidedly neo-libertarian, majority, to
the point of having a significant sway on social trends? Indeed, if said group
were to dismantle the government entirely, to reduce all wages to the rock
bottom, to preserve mass possession of capital and property, and to have an
exclusively, eradicable progressive agenda, what is to stop them taking away
the weekend? Or rather, what still justifies having a weekend in their terms?
Naturally, I thought of convenience.
It is convenient for this form of society to maintain a status quo and not
overly disrupt the massive serf population their small oligarchy would be
governing. However, the issue would clearly be in their agenda.
Namely, the weekend is a legalistic, but now inherently
cultural, institution, ensuring that emancipated citizens are free from work
obligation for at least two days of the week (in a given role). Regardless of
how they are compelled, or whether they wish to forego this right of their own
volition, the right remains a constant, immutable and inalienable certainty. It
is the only insurance that, upon entering a contract of waged slavery, any
agent is entitled to, and must be provided with, a break from work to have a
social, work-free existence. But, don’t neo-libertarians hate the law? Why, the
law is just the long and convoluted arm of government! It wants to tell me what
to eat, what to do, when to go to bed, and when I’ve passed Go! And can collect
£200. The law stinks, to the libertarian. He believes the entire remit of the
state is:
“…to adequately protect all citizens in all instances of spontaneous
combustion, someone trying to steal my car, and a lack of education.”
Therefore, to dictate when he is freely allowed not to work,
and have the guarantee of emancipation from slavery, is to piss in his face and
call him a child. He will throw a tantrum extraordinaire across the mall floor
that is political discourse. He will
throw his Silver spoon from his Phil & Teds, and scream the government back
under the rock it crawled from. And since the government is most likely his
father, uncle or grandfather, he will want to avoid a scene and just give in to
darling baby Gove.
What you see then, is that it will only take the libertarian
rule of the government to raise the question of justifying the weekend.
“It’s a whole two day’s
productivity lost! That’s two days I could be paying someone rock-bottom wages
and making a fortune on the labour return! I could keep the phones open,
cold-calling grannies about to tuck in to a Yorkshire pudding, or someone on
their day off settling in to a marathon of soap operas! I could continue
polluting the world with CO2 for a whole day longer, all at the divestment of
parents from their children! Imagine, friends, what a glorious world it would
be without Sunday!”
“By God, chaps; he’s right…”
<Oh wait, no God in the
atheistic libertarian future…>
“By Jobs, we’re losing a fortune
on this weekend palaver!”
“I don’t work all week anyway,
and I’m sick of seeing these slackers
running around my Nature on their
weekends anyway! If anything, I’m giving myself something by taking their
weekend away-“
“…And right you should! Why, you’ve
been not working strenuously for the
last thirty-six years, with no breaks
whatsoever! And what about all that not
university that you were doing too! Gosh I remember how you much didn’t pay for all of that! You deserve
a bloody weekend!
“Exactly, I say ‘aye’ on the
matter, and be done with it.”
The ayes have it.
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