When I was a child Sunday was the first day in Sweden but since then it has changed to Monday (I have no idea when this happened) and now the thought of beginning the week on a Sunday seems very weird to me.
Obligatory link to the Straight Dope column: Why do Christians worship on Sunday when the Bible says the Sabbath is on Saturday?
Right. That’s all it is, a traditional schedule. Bookkeeping, you might say. There are seven possible six-and-one schedules that conform to the Biblical mandate. One has very long standing among Jews, another merely very long standing among most Christians. The others were perhaps used sometimes by wanderers in the wilderness, or isolated communities, or round-the-world travelers who paid attention to sunsets.
For those of you who say that Sunday and Saturday “bookend” the week, then why are they called the weekends? Bookends (note the plural) are on either side of the books, but a weekend (always singular) ends the week.
I lived in England for a year and never got the hang of their putting Monday as the first day of the week on their calendars. Would confuse me no end, always recalibrating and often thinking I was a day “off” one way or another.
I voted Sunday, though it would’ve been interesting if the OP poll had broken things down by USA vs. International respondents.
I, personally, prefer the European way of having the weekend at the end of the week… as in Sunday is the last day of the week. But I live in a country that doesn’t see it that way. So, to read a calendar in my home country, I have to practice the Sunday-is-the-beginning method, while believing in the Sunday-is-the-ending method. So I voted “other.”
Why not just get a Monday-first calendar? Or do you have to read other people’s calendars for some reason?
I’m not going to pay to import a calendar when I can find one at the corner store for $2. I guess I’m compromising my ideals for money…
Well, if it’s economy you’re after, you could print one, like this.
Monday. Sunday doesn’t make any sense to me as the first day.
For years, I lived in a Quaker boarding school where at least a sizeable fraction of people referred to them as First Day, Second Day, and so forth, rather than using the customary names of the days of the week.
But I’ll be damned if I can remember which day was First Day.
I once was on the social committee of a singles group, and had the job of creating a calendar with all of our upcoming events. Most of them were on the weekends and many of them spanned Fri-Sun or Sat-Sun. After struggling with entries that dropped down to the next row of the calendar, I had the brilliant idea to create the calendar with Monday-Sunday weeks so the weekend events would not be broken up.
When I present my calendar, the rest of the committe basically said “What the hell is that? You can’t put Monday at the beginning of the week! This will confuse everyone! We can’t read this!” so I had to go back to the (more correct, but less aesthetically pleasing) Sun-Sat format.
While visually Sunday has to start off the week on calendars (those that start with Monday look wrong and I always mess up what days are where), I think of Monday as being the first day of the actual week, with Saturday & Sunday being the weekend.