Sunday, It's More Than I Can Stand

I have a problem. Ok, actually, I have several problems, most of which are deep rooted psychological issues that we won’t go into today. No, today we are going to go into my problem with Sunday. No seriously, I have a problem with Sunday. And no, this is not one of my acutely ingrained psychological paranoia either. This is a very real and very serious problem.

Every calendar I have puts Sunday as the beginning of the week. Why is that? Sunday is clearly part of the weekend. And I’m pretty sure the word “weekend” denotes the end of the week. I mean, it says it right there. A day can’t possibly be the first day of the week and the end of the week at the same time. There are only seven days in the week, so you can’t start and end with Sunday (that would make eight days, which is totally and punitively egregious). You can only do one or the other. And before you question whether or not Sunday is actually part of the weekend, I’ve looked on Wikipedia, and it says that Saturday and Sunday are considered the weekend here in the good old US of A. And if there’s one thing I know, if it’s on Wikipedia, it has to be true. I mean, the internet has never lied to me before.

So why does everyone insist on having Sunday as the first day of the week? This is probably because most Christians consider Sunday the Lord’s Day. However, the name “Sunday” originates before Christianity. Apparently it was the Egyptians who originally came up with the whole seven days a week scheme. They gave each day of the week a name corresponding to the seven known celestial objects: the sun, moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. They exported their development to Rome who used their names for the seven heavenly bodies to devise the week we have today.

It makes sense to me. Moon-day is Monday, Saturn-day is Saturday, and Sun-day is Sunday (in case you couldn’t figure that last one out for yourself). In fact, I know in other cultures, both Sunday and Monday are expressed as the sun and the moon. Specifically, in Japanese the symbol for the sun is used to denote Sunday and the character representing the moon is used to refer to Monday. It’s all interesting stuff really, etymology is like that. But that still doesn’t help me with my problem. Why does everyone insist on making Sunday the first day of the week when they all know Sunday is part of the weekend? It boggles the mind!

Seriously, I want you to think about it. I’m sure you’ve spoken of the weekend in conversation while you were referring to Sunday. I’m sure you’ve done it numerous times. Yet you still have no problem saying that the week begins on Sunday. Doesn’t that sound a bit hypocritical? Sunday cannot possibly be the beginning and the end of every week. And the week does not begin in the middle of the weekend. That defeats the whole purpose of having a weekend!

Are you beginning to see my dilemma now? I’m very confused. Not that getting me confused is a difficult task to accomplish, far from it actually. But when I get confused, I tend to get angry. And you wouldn’t like it when I’m angry. When I get angry I get real quiet and tend to keep to myself. I know it’s not as terrifying as a green, 300 pound, mutated freak throwing SUVs at you, but trust me, I’m no fun when I’m quiet. So try not to confuse me or I’ll be forced into seclusion with a bottle of my favorite bourbon. Yet another reason to drink: things are far less confusing when you’re drunk. Mainly, this is because I don’t seem to pay attention to anything while inebriated.

So people, please, I need some help here. We need to sit down and decide once and for all whether Sunday is indeed the first day of the week or a celebrated part of the weekend. It can’t be both. For my sanity’s sake, we have to choose one or the other. I’d like to quickly point out that there is absolutely nothing wrong with beginning the week with Monday. In fact, most European countries already do this. Usually I hate to agree with anyone who isn’t America, but I think Europe has the right idea here. Computers seem to agree too. ISO 8601, which I’m told is the international standard for date and time representation (I wouldn’t know for sure, I mean I’m a nerd, but I’m not that big of a nerd), places Monday at the start of the week and Sunday at the end.

There are some good arguments for keeping Sunday as the first day, however. Our good buddy America Jr. (pronounced as “Canada” by some) starts its week off with Sunday. Additionally, Judeo-Christian, Egyptian, and Roman traditions all place Sunday at the commencement of the week. I mean, if we got the whole seven days in a week thing from the Egyptians and Romans maybe we should keep their order the same as well. They seemed to know what they were doing with the whole calendar thing. Well, except for Leap Year. Seriously, how does adding an additional day to the calendar every four years make sense?

I realize that we’re trying to keep the calendar year in synch with the vernal equinox. And that’s cool with me. We don’t need December falling in the middle of the summer, which is what would happen in a couple of thousand or so years if we didn’t have a Leap Year. I mean, who wants to celebrate Christmas in the blistering heat and humidity? Well, besides the Australians, whose seasons are the opposite of ours because they decided to put their country on the wrong side of the equator. Would you want a zero percent chance of a White Christmas? I think not. But why should I be forced to remember every four years to add an additional day to my calendar just because the Romans couldn’t come up with a more accurate way of measuring time relative to this vernal equinox thing?

Heck, even with the Leap Year instated we’re still off a little over 0.0001 days every year. As it turns out, we’re not very good at keeping track of time. Did you know that last year one additional second ticked by just before the New Year? That means that instead of having the usual 31,536,000 seconds in a normal year (non Leap Year) we had 31,536,001 seconds in 2005. We are supposedly skipping a second in certain years in order to keep our clocks in synch with the rotation of the Earth. The Earth is apparently slowing down its rotation which makes the days just a little bit longer. I don’t know why we have to let the Earth’s rotation push us around on how we handle our clocks. I think we should simply correct Earth’s rotation instead. I’m sure we have the technology to speed up Earth’s rotation if we wanted to. And while we’re at it, we should fix whatever astrological problem is throwing off our calendar. As far as I’m concerned, the cosmos should conform to us, not the other way around.

But then again, time is a relative thing. We add an extra day or an extra second here and there in an attempt to match certain astrological phenomenon. This doesn’t mean that time is slowing down or that we magically get another day in February every four years. It just means that’s how we choose to measure it. And really, is how we measure time that important? What’s important is how we spend our time. Personally, I choose to spend my time campaigning to move Sunday behind Saturday at the end of the week where it rightfully belongs. I can’t accept a world where the weekend is at the beginning of the week. And yes, I’m still confused and I’m still upset with that. Like I said before, I have problems. Petty as they may be, they’re still problems.