Mandahla: The Peculiar Life of Sundays

Even if Sunday no longer has a religious implication for many, the idea of Sunday as a special day permeates our culture and is still charged with meaning. Elizabeth Bishop's "Sunday, 4 A. M." is a gloomy poem about a disturbing dream, but more disturbing dreamed on Sunday than Tuesday. Or take Kris Kristofferson's loneliness and despair in "Sunday Morning Coming Down." As a young child, in her first book Laura Ingalls Wilder said, "I hate Sunday!" Indeed, many have written or spoken about the dread of Sundays, from enforced church attendance to the Sunday blues; others have written about the joys of Sunday, whether church, family or individually-oriented.

To see how we got to the various legacies of Sundays, Stephen Miller traces the history of the day. He focuses on the Christian West--England, Scotland and the U.S.--but starts with Sunday in antiquity. Romans regarded Saturday as the day of rest because it was an unlucky day, when no business should be conducted. After his conversion, Constantine decreed that Sunday be the day of rest, but it was dedicated to the sun god, not his new Christian god (Michael Grant says his beliefs "were in a bit of a muddle."). The author proceeds to Elizabethan England, Boswell and Johnson and the rise and decline of Victorian Sundays. In England, the subject of Sunday observance was debated in Parliament for six centuries. "In 1388 [Parliament] prohibited Sunday tennis and football, but it encouraged Sunday archery. In 1688 it allowed 'the Sunday sale of mackerel before and after divine service.'" U.S. legislatures frequently debated the same issue, particularly the question of postal service on Sunday, which stopped in 1912. Miller discusses American writers like Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens and Robert Lowell in the chapter "Sunday Nostalgia, Sunday Despair." Citing many writers (Emily Dickinson, Martin Marty, Walt Whitman, Claire Messud), he examines practicing, non-practicing and lapsed Christians, looking at their "Sunday lives."

The effects of the commercialization of Sunday, the debate between secularism and religion, varieties of Sunday worship from churches to individual Emersonian transcendence at the beach or in the mountains, even religious services on cell phones--all are examined through changes in Western religion and culture. Reflecting on the possibiity that the transformation of Sunday has contributed to anger in the U.S., Miller mentions Wendell Berry's "Sunday Morning," saying, "The loss of a day of rest . . . damages our psyche, so we become impatient and angry. We need a sabbath to keep order in our soul." The loss of a sabbath is, as Berry says, inescapable.--Marilyn Dahl

Shelf Talker: Whether Sunday is seen as a church day, a chore day or a day to relax, whether it's viewed with melancholy or joy, we consider it a special day, and Stephen Miller explains all the reasons why and why we need Sunday.