The Winged Chariot of Time

The Seven-Day Week

In his The Seven Day Circle: The History and the Meaning of the Week, Eviatar Zerubavel develops how the history of the week is a story involving religion, holy numbers, planets, and astrology--hence our shortened labels for Saturn Day, Sun Day, and Moon Day. Some numbers are considered desirable, lucky, or holy in many nations. The number seven is one of these. This is one reason why there are seven days in the week (in fact, in many languages the word for week is synonymous with the word for seven).

Much of our lives is centered and structured around a weekly pattern. Indeed, as Pitirim Sorokin observed, the week is "one of the most important points in our `orientation' in time and social reality." As children, we learn the meaning of the weekend before we learn the meaning of a month. There are clear phenomenological differences between Friday time and Monday time; we are not biologically hardwired nor naturally triggered to feel knotted stomachs on Sunday evenings. When Trinity University students were asked what their favorite day of the week was, 25% said Thursdays, 37% said Fridays and 22% Saturdays.

Is it not the case that each day of the week has evolved to have its own "flavor"? I've often thought about how early Boomers may have been socialized toward such weekday distinctions. Consider, for instance, the lessons of one of their most popular after-school television programs, "The Mickey Mouse Club." Do you remember how the days went?

	On Mondays, Fun with Music Day, the sequence opens with Mickey playing an upright piano. Realizing he has an audience, he leaps up and addresses an unseen group of children: Mickey: Hi, Mouseketeers! Children: Hi, Mickey! Mickey: Big doings this week - adventure, fun, music, cartoons, news - Everybody ready? Children: Ready! Mickey: Then on with the show!
	For Guest Star Day on Tuesday, Mickey appeared once again playing the piano. This time, it's a grand, and he's nattily attired in a tuxedo. Mickey: Hi, Mouseketeers! Children: Hi, Mickey! Mickey: Got guests comin' and everything. Everybody neat and pretty? Children: Neat and pretty! Mickey: Then, take it away!
	Wednesday finds Mickey dressed as the Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia, riding onto the stage on a rambunctious flying carpet. It's interesting to note in the dialogue that follows that Mickey refers to the day as being Stunt Day, although it was actually Anything Can Happen Day. Mickey: Whoa, boy! Whoa, steady! Hi, Mouseketeers! Children: Hi, Mickey! Mickey: Wednesday is Stunt Day, Mouseketeers, so hang on, anything goes! Ya ready? Children: Ready! Mickey: Then let the show begin!
	For Thursday, Circus Day, Mickey is dressed in a band costume and plays the slide trombone. This is the shortest of the introduction scenes. Mickey: Hi, Mouseketeers! Children: Hi, Mickey! Mickey: Well, today is, ah, oh, ah... Children: Circus Day! Mickey: Right! Okay, Mouseketeers, all together now... Children: On with the show!
	The final opening sequence is for Talent Round-up Day on Friday. Mickey appears dressed as a cowboy, twirling a lariat as he speaks to the audience. Mickey: Yee-ee, Yee-ee! Hi, podners! Mickey: This here's our roundup day, so you all pretty nigh ready? Mickey: Sure enough! Mickey: Let's get on with it!

Among the weekly rhythms (and myths of daily differences) we find:

	rich international folklore concerning each day's traits, such as how individuals' temperaments are shaped by the day on which they are born or how Fridays, because it was the day of Christ's crucifixion, are associated with misfortune;
	weekly cycles of lethal heart attacks, with Mondays being the deadliest day, according to a 1980 study reported by University of Manitoba researchers. In their long-term follow-up study of nearly 4,000 men, they found that 38 had died of sudden heart attacks on Mondays while only 15 died on Fridays. Further, for men with no history of heart disease, Monday was particularly dangerous. While there were an average of 8.2 heart attack deaths for Tuesdays through Sundays, Mondays were three times as lethal.
	weekly cycles of violent crime;
	in France, automotive lemons are referred to as "Monday cars;"

Certainly one driving force behind these weekly cycles is the rhythm of working (or "week") days and days of the weekend. Speaking of manmade times that have come to accrue a sense of "naturalness" and to compartmentalize a very clear set of "appropriate" social activities, the weekend is one of the most obvious.

Yet this special time for familial, religious, leisure, and consumptive activities is a historically-recent creation. According to Witold Rybczynski in Waiting for the Weekend, the Oxford English Dictionary finds the earliest recorded use of the word in an 1879 English magazine. Battles over the precise meaning of this time continue. Through the eighteenth century when the workweek concluded on Saturday evenings, not only was Sunday the only weekly "day off" but was to be a day of moral restraint (no merriment please) and religious ritual. This was the legacy of the Reformation and Puritanism; Sunday was the weekly holy day, a time designed to displace Catholicism's numerous saints' and religious festival days. But then there is the fact that work time and play time was more blurred in the past, unlike their strict segregation nowadays. The workplace featured a number of recreational activities. Rybczynski notes how trade guilds often organized their own outings and singing and drinking clubs.

In 1926, Henry Ford closed all of his factories on Saturdays--not to increase time for moral reflection or personal development but to increase consumption. But it was not until the Great Depression that the two-day weekend became firmly fixed, and that was to remedy the shortage of jobs.