Was Sunday ever “a day of rest”?

Sydney and Erin — At Sunday Brunch

It seems to me that Sunday is a scrambling day.  Scrambling to finish up what didn’t get done on Saturday.  Scrambling to get things started (and finished!) for Sunday dinner.  Scrambling to get our ducks in a row for the upcoming week.  Why did we used to call it “a day of rest” anyway?

I do remember that when I was just beginning school in Alameda, my mother got up to see me off to Sunday School… and then went back to bed.  Only once in a while did my parents go to church and when I asked why, they said they had had enough church at the University of Redlands — a Baptist institution — to last a lifetime.  I think they were obligated to attend a church service every day and I specifically remember her saying that there were five (count ’em five services) on Sundays.  YIKES!  So maybe they felt they had earned a day of rest.  Or at least a morning.

Blum’s, San Francisco – 1890s – 1970s

I do remember, too, that it was often on Sundays that we “went for a drive” — sometimes out into the countryside where we once bought my dog, Zipper.  And sometimes (at Christmastime, especially) into San Francisco to see the Christmas trees in the windows along the Marina or to wander the downtown streets and look at the magical displays in the department store windows.  Sometimes on Sundays we went and got a hot fudge sundae (which I always thought was funny — a sundae on a Sunday) as a special treat.

Looking back, I don’t know that Sundays were as much a day of rest as a day to have family fun — the only day of the week with two working parents that such activities were possible.  But like they say: a change is as good as a rest.  And therein must lie the problem when you are retired and every day is a sort of Sunday…

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