BBC Radio 4 2015-11-13

I’ve always assumed that a week is made up of seven days because it’s based on the creation myth of the book of Genesis which describes God creating the world in that time. But apparently the seven day week goes back much further to the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia. Days, months and years were based on the movements of the moon and the sun, so it was then agreed to name each day after one of seven planets, thus creating the week. And it was common in ancient civilizations for one day out of the seven to be different, often used for rituals.

Today there’s a clear divide between people who want the seventh day to be different and others who want it to be the same. Plans to extend Sunday trading so that shops open for as long as any other day have just ground to a halt in Parliament.

For anyone under the age of 25, it must be hard to imagine life before Sunday opening. It was the world of Jimmy Porter, anti-hero of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, raging at the dullness of nothing to do. “How I hate Sundays”, he says. “Always the same ritual. Reading the papers, drinking tea, ironing.”

Since Sunday trading laws changed in 1994 and a relaxation in licensing laws, people can already shop, eat out and drink for most of the day – but for not quite as long as every other day. Some commentators have suggested that the opponents of extended Sunday trading are killjoys who think Sunday is sacred and should be devoted just to going to church, turning back the clock to the days of Jimmy Porter.

But to me this seems a misreading of what Sunday is about. Christianity made Sunday its Sabbath, rather than Saturday, kept by the Jews, but the new religion did adopt their Scriptures. And those Scriptures say the Sabbath should be different: a much-needed day of rest for the entire household, including its animals, its servants and the main family. The day commonly thought of as dedicated to God becomes the Lord’s Day by being a day for people. The difficulty now is that a day of rest often involves shopping and eating out. That means others have to work, which is why trade unions have voiced concern about extended Sunday opening.

The wisdom of ancient civilizations, expressed in books of Scripture like Exodus and Deuteronomy, is that we all need a different tempo to the rest of the week. The difficulty is that with greater freedom to do what we like, when we like, those crucial moments to pause, think, and yes, pray, are harder to find.