On the Seventh Day

In mostly Buddhist Ceylon last week, Sunday became just another working day. By act of Parliament, stores and government offices will henceforth close each month on four Buddhist feasts called poya days, corresponding roughly to the phases of the moon. The change amounts to a rejection of the custom of Sunday observance that has been standard in Ceylon since 1815, when the island was a British colony. But it does not really bespeak a trend; elsewhere, surprisingly, Sunday is gaining favor, even among countries that have religious reasons for preferring another day.

Sabbath observance is one of Judaism's gifts to the ancient world, which had no concept of a regular weekly respite from work. Taking their cue from Biblical evidence that God rested on the seventh day of creation, Jews from the earliest days kept Saturday sacred as a time to abstain from manual labor and pray to the Lord God of Israel. The early Christians kept the principle, but gradually shifted the time of observance to Sunday. It proved sound against such onslaughts as the French Revolution's attempt to establish a ten-day week, and colonialism carried it around the world. Now Sunday is almost universal, but it is observed with many a quixotic qualification.

Big Sundays. In Taiwan, where factories are at work every day of the week, at some large plants there are "big" and "little" Sundays; on big ones, employees get the day off; on little ones, everybody works. The law of Israel provides that every religious community is entitled to observe one day of rest a week, which means that Moslem communities close down on Friday, Jews on Saturday, Christians on Sunday--a situation that could conceivably lead to an ecumenical three-day weekend for all. In Saudi Arabia and Libya, Friday is kept strictly as Allah's day and Sunday is a normal work day; but in half-Christian Lebanon and Western-influenced Syria and Turkey, many Moslem businessmen close down on Friday only long enough to visit their mosques, although they shut down completely on Sunday. Jordan's government offices in Amman close on Friday, but in Jordanian Jerusalem, one of Christianity's most holy places, Sunday is generally observed as the day of rest.

Indonesia, 90% Moslem, adjourns office work early on Friday and takes all day Sunday off. Many Moslems and Hindus in Malaysia are now accustomed to paying visits to mosques and temples on Sunday--not because it has any religious significance to them but simply because urban businesses are closed. The British heritage of Sunday off prevails in India and Pakistan. Japan, which until 1876 used the Chinese lunar calendar with no uniformity of holidays, shifted that year to the seven-day week with Sundays off. Buddhists and Shintoists readily accepted the change, although many businesses ignored it until a 1947 labor-standard law required that workers get one day a week off.

Made for Man. China shifted in 1912, and despite its violent antipathy to religion, Red China keeps Sunday as a day of rest. Russia in 1929 undertook the grand secular experiment of staggered days off during an uninterrupted work week, so that one-sixth of the workers were off on any given day. The law was hated so much that Stalin quietly buried it in 1940. Now, except for certain shift work, the general rule in the Soviet Union is the five-day week, which means Saturday and Sunday off. It all goes to show that even people who don't hold that man was made for the Sabbath can readily believe that the Sabbath was made for man.

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