June 20, 2001

  • Toreibjo has been doing a great job of grounding us in the origin of the names of the days of the week, but what of the origin and significance of the week itself?




    There was a time, years ago, when I was literally living my life so entirely one-day-to-the-next that a “weekend” had no personal implications except to push fate forward one more day, then one more day, then yet again.  Don’t mistake me, life then was so intense (the life of a Repo Man is always instense!) 'cuase every day was the essence of the future unfolding.  Hence, distinctions within the week, or even of week to week, were so very weak that I personally (not culturally, of course, since common sense dictates cognizance of how others live) dispensed with them.



    I want to know what became of the changes


    We waited for love to bring


    Were they only the fitful dreams


    Of some greater awakening


    I've been aware of the time going by


    They say in the end it's the wink of an eye


    And when the morning light comes


    Streaming in


    You'll get up and do it again


    Amen



    Ah, but then I was a warrior in a warrior’s domain (George, George, George of the Jungle) while today I’ve become an acculturated player drawing my meager sustenance from a bank, a college, and whoever else will let me touch their PC.



    I'm going to be a happy idiot


    And struggle for the legal tender


    Where the ads take aim and lay their claim


    To the heart and the soul of the spender


    And believe in whatever may lie


    In those things that money can buy


    Thought true love could have been a contender


    Are you there?


    Say a prayer for the Pretender


    Who started out so young and strong


    Only to surrender


     


    And so a week is a week again for me, too.  But what the hell really is this reoccurring constraint upon our conception of time that has us humping in its midst?


     




              (Hump-day)



    The following is formerly from the Web's Global Encyclopedia, now defunct:


     


    Next to the day, the week is the most important calendric unit in our life. And yet, there is no astronomical significance to the week. Nothing cosmic happens in the heavens in seven days.* How, then, did the week come to assume such importance?


    The first thing to understand is that a week is not necessarily seven days. In pre-literate societies weeks of 4 to 10 days were observed; those weeks were typically the interval from one market day to the next. Four to 10 days gave farmers enough time to accumulate and transport goods to sell. (The one week that was almost always avoided was the 7-day week -- it was considered unlucky!) The 7-day week was introduced in Rome (where ides, nones, and calends were the vogue) in the first century A.D. by Persian astrology fanatics, not by Christians or Jews. The idea was that there would be a day for the five known planets, plus the sun and the moon, making seven; this was an ancient West Asian idea. However, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire in the time of Constantine (c. 325 A.D.), the familiar Hebrew-Christian week of 7 days, beginning on Sunday, became conflated with the pagan week and took its place in the Julian calendar. Thereafter, it seemed to Christians that the week Rome now observed was seamless with the 7-day week of the Bible -- even though its pagan roots were obvious in the names of the days: Saturn's day, Sun's day, Moon's day. The other days take their equally pagan names in English from a detour into Norse mythology: Tiw's day, Woden's day, Thor's day, and Fria's day.


    The amazing thing is that today the 7-day week, which is widely viewed as being Judeo-Christian, even Bible-based, holds sway for civil purposes over the entire world, including countries where Judaism and Christianity are anathema. Chinese, Arabs, Indians, Africans, Japanese, and a hundred others sit down at the U.N. to the tune of a 7-day week, in perfect peace (at least calendrically!). So dear is this succession of 7 days that when the calendar changed from Julian to Gregorian the week was preserved, though not the days of the month: in 1752, in England, Sept. 14 followed Sept. 2 -- but Thursday followed Wednesday, as always. Eleven days disappeared from the calendar -- but not from the week!


    --------


    *Yes, it's true that the average time from, say, half-moon to full moon is 7.383 days, but this is less than 12% closer to 7 than to 8. (Possibly mindful of this, the Romans had an 8-day week.) In any case, the exact moment of half or full moon is hard to judge. The moon determines the month, not the week (the very word "month" has been related to "moon" for thousands of years; in Sanskrit they are the same.) 

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