As I come to terms with my recent retirement, one day at a time, searching for meaning and losing track of what day it is, I came to wonder why a week is seven days. I did a little research, although I had an inkling that the Torah and then the Bible may have had something to do with it.
It seems that our seven-day week arose in Mesopotamia some four thousand years ago. I quote from: Chronicles of chronology: The power of seven,” Economist, 2001-12-20: -
"The Sumerians … worshipped seven gods whom they could see in the sky. Reverently, they named the days of their week for these seven heavenly bodies … For the Sumerians themselves, seven was a very special number. They conceived of a seven-branched Tree of Life, and of seven heavens … In spite of all that, Ur’s seventh day was not holy. On the contrary, it represented danger and darkness. It was risky to do anything at such a time. So it became a day of rest. Ever since the time when Abraham trekked westward from Ur, Mesopotamian influences had helped to form Hebrew traditions."
My guess is that the Sumerians concept of time influenced the Hebrew Bible's creation story, and the Christian Bible. No other religions' creation stories limit it to seven days, or six, if you will, plus a day of rest.
Anyone acquainted with the Christian bible knows about its version of the creation: it starts with, "In the beginning", and goes on to say that God took six days to make the heavens and the Earth, and on the seventh he rested. It doesn't say why God decided to create the universe and, apparently, he didn't have a beginning, which implies that time only started to exist when God took up the hobby of Creation.
With time, however, civilizations imposed the names of their own gods on days of the week, once seven days became the norm. I could go into how each day of the week came to get its name in English, French or German, etc., but basically, they can all be traced back to gods, Roman, German, Norse and so on.
It is interesting that other segments of time, such as a month and a year, were not defined by the religious aspect but by the natural movement of the Earth's rotation around the Sun and the moon's rotation around the Earth. That's what makes the number seven, a unnatural choice for a segment of time. But woe to those in history who have tried to change it by making the 'week' longer, from the Egyptians to Napoleon. They did not have long term success. The seven-day week is, to my knowledge, now globally accepted and religion doesn't come into it. Well, it does, in that different religions have different days of rest, but still incorporated into the seven-day allotment.
What I was also contemplating about the week, was the different feelings each day of the week elicits in us. Each day has a different vibe for each of us for personal reasons and based on life experience. I think that we all have favourite, and not so favourite, days. This is, no doubt, because of the pattern of life, work and recreation that the seven-day segment of time creates. I also feel that we pace ourselves according to this arbitrary slice of time. Songs are dedicated to certain days of the week and the emotional effect they produce in us.
Monday has a bad reputation simply because it's the start of the working week, but it does motivate us. We glimpse the shining lights of Saturday and Sunday in the distance and work towards them. "Rainy Days and Mondays (always get me down)", by the Carpenters pretty much sums up most people's attitude to the poor benighted day.
Tuesday manages to keep its head under the radar of being typecast as we settle into the working week and put at least one day behind us. Wednesday, I have only recently discovered, is known as Hump Day. We've reached the top of the hill at mid-working-week and can now coast downhill. Thursday we're almost at the finishing line but not quite. There is a restrained sense of optimism about it, but by Friday, the horse has broken into a canter, and nothing will hold it back.
Friday has always been, Thank God It's Friday, even if you aren't religious. It's like a fever that's broken after the 'flu. It's time for whoopee.
As a child, I loved Sundays. Saturday was the weekend too, of course, but Sunday seemed special somehow. Dad would drag me off to church on that day regularly, but it was our time together. My mother was a Church of England but, basically, just Christian. Dad, on the other hand, was the product of a devout Irish Catholic mother who died before I was born. Dad was, simply, the nicest man on the planet in my estimation, and that remains my opinion to this day.
Once home, he would read the Sunday paper and would give me the comics section from the middle. I would read this as I lay sprawled on the living room floor from the age of five. Sunday would roll on in its salubrious and unhurried way and Dad would usually end up mowing the lawn, then napping on the sofa. We would usually watch a matinee on television after lunch in winter. In summer we might go to the beach. My mother was a fabulous entertainer and, often, Sundays included guests to a barbeque that Dad cooked on the patio accompanied by salads, baked potatoes in their jackets and ratatouille cooked by Mum. All this would be eaten overlooking the beautiful bay of Pittwater north of Sydney.
These were the happiest days of my life, and so I rate Sundays as my best day of the week. They were also filled, eventually, with sadness as I had to return to my hated boarding school on Monday for the week until Friday and, for me, these days were a torment until I left school. I no longer attend church on Sunday. Nature is my church, and I haven't found one with as much God in it as the small one at Mona Vale, on the northern beaches of Sydney that Dad and I attended together.
It's now hard enough for me not working weekdays let alone trying to remember what day it is. A rhythm has been removed from my life that I found quite satisfactory. It's good when things have a beginning, a middle and an end. It gives one an anchor, a map and a destination. Time may not be tangible, but it sure feels like it, forgive the pun. Perhaps that's an interesting thing to note about human nature; we can take something abstract and give it form.
I'm now trying to find something to fill the form. I had a pattern to my life but now I need a passion to work on. When I find it, I'm going to apply my pattern to it again so I can get my rhythm back.
Wish me luck.
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