Do you refrain from work, shopping and such for one day per week? Sabbath/Shabbat or the like? Or for you, is one day like any other WRT activities (except for actually having to GO to work). If you do observe the Sabbath, what is the impact on the quality of your life?
What about when you were a kid? Was Saturday or Sunday treated differently in your home from the rest of the week?
I remember when I was a kid (late 50’s early 60’s) stores were not open on Sundays for the most part, so you couldn’t shop. That, of course, is a thing of the past, and with cell phones and email, it’s almost impossible to get away from work, even on the weekend. Sometimes weekends are exhausting and it’s almost like you look forward to going back to work on Monday so you can rest, kwim?
I am not even sure what a day of rest would look like for me. I like to sleep in late on Sundays so I guess that fits but that is just between me and my God. I think he wants me to be well rested.
I have knowledge and thinking job though. Nobody can tell if I am working even when I am at work. The whole idea is a more than a little antiquated and isn’t that bright to begin with. Maybe it was when farmers had to be prompted to get out of the fields and spend time with their family but it isn’t today. My idea of non-rest is spending time getting the whole family gussied up for church and helping to clean up after the social hour. I don’t think that either me or the world is better off if I just refuse to do certain arbitrary things based on the day of the week.
I grew up under Blue laws in Louisiana. Only random things were open on Sunday. It was a major pain in the ass back then. Even the grocery store I worked in couldn’t be open until noon so that cost me good money ($3.35 an hour). Every Sunday was Sunday school followed by church with a five hour break and then on to youth group. Sunday school and youth group were usually fun fun but church I couldn’t handle. That was the longest year of my for an hour every week.
Maybe they’re all observing the Sabbath right now.
I do think it’s necessary, or at least conducive to physical/mental/emotional health, to have some down time. I don’t enforce a “day of rest” on myself or anyone else in any formal or legalistic sense, but I do have days when I don’t do much of anything that would count as work, even if I have to plan ahead for them.
I go to Friday prayers (and that I have been shockingly remiss on attendance lately) and that is about it, Friday is otherwise a working day. Its a Saturday and I have to be in Court in about a hour. On Sunday I will spend preparing for the next week.
Not for religious reasons, but I tend to do as little as possible on Sundays. I make sure I don’t need to go out to the grocery store or gas station, and try to get all my householdy chores done on Saturday. But it’s out of laziness, not worship.
Clarification: I wasn’t necessarily suggesting one would do it as a religious observance. I mean, you might as has been done traditionally, but you might also do it for your own mental well-being, to slow down, to recharge your batteries, to reconnect with nature/family, to disconnect from your routine weekly activities, to take a bit of a break from electronics, to REST your body, mind, heart, and wallet… stuff like that. IOW you might be doing it for yourself, not for “god.” I’m interested that some find the idea of a regular day of rest appalling.
As a kid, I used to always say we observed the Sabbath on Saturday because we went to church on Sunday. Both times, plus any choir practice, after church functions, and later preparing for Sunday School lessons, etc. Going to church the way we did was work.
Sort of. I use Sunday to do laundry and mentally recharge for the week ahead. I do not go anywhere on Sunday unless it’s to pick up milk at the corner store, or out into the yard to enjoy fresh air.
I see NO ONE except my husband on Sundays and decline all social invitations. I won’t even answer the doorbell since we live near a playground and a handful of friends with small children sometimes forget that I don’t do drop-ins.
Friends will occasionally question my policy and I am just firm and polite about telling them I don’t do social things on Sundays.
If Monday is a holiday Sunday can be social, but then Monday is my day of rest.
My last day of “work” was in 2000, so all of my days are essentially rest days. Even so, I have noticed a difference in Saturday and Sunday, especially during football season.
My sleeping habits are still in “work week” mode for some reason, and I will sleep at least an hour later on the weekend. Pavlovian? No doubt. And that’s in spite of having worked night shifts and 12-hour nights along the way. The last 20 years were the 8-5 variety.
It’s been at least 10 years since I made any sustained effort to attend church, and then it was to accompany my wife. We both stopped going for no special reason.
When I was a kid (Catholic), Saturday afternoon/evening was a “getting ready for Sunday” thing, as someone mentioned. You made sure your Sunday clothes were ready, clean, ironed, etc. Shoes polished. Girls put their hair in curlers, which you slept on (oh, the years of brush rollers!). Located your missal. During one period of my childhood, my parents and I would head to the church for Confession on Saturday evening so as to be all absolved for Sunday morning. The idea of a hasty confession Sunday morning before Mass was slacker behavior. I mean, what if there was a big line and the priest couldn’t get to everyone?
My mother (born in 1924) was one of 10 children of Slovakian immigrants (Catholics of the Byzantine rite). When she was a kid, Sunday was a *strict *day of rest. The kids weren’t even allowed to use scissors on Sunday. This prohibition always made us wonder if her father was Jewish, as this is similar to the Jewish rule about tearing/using tools on Shabbat–although Saturday for Jews–but no one in the family ever knew for sure.
It’s interesting that for us today, since we sit at desks and work on computers all week, manual labor like laundry (okay, it’s not *that *manual-- it’s not like beating laundry on a rock at the river’s edge or carrying buckets of water to the boiler in the kitchen), and yard work are relaxing. I agree, they are. It’s relaxing to put the body to work and give the brain a rest.
Our forebears worked alone all week and came into town for church and socializing on Sunday (in Fredericksburg, Texas, there are “Sunday Houses” where the farmers stayed in town), whereas we are immersed in human contact during the week and many of us do not want to see or talk to *anyone *in person on our day of rest, although we still might be available by phone, text, or email.
This. I try to get all my errands/clearning etc. done by Saturday afternoon, and then Saturday night through Sunday is my “I’m not doing anything that I don’t feel like doing” time. It needn’t be “restful” (though it often is, especially Sunday) but it’s reserved for recreation.