Let’s make Sundays fun

Hands up if you remember why Sundays are meant to be so special.

Yes, yes, I know all about that twenty-two-hundred-year (and counting) tradition of setting a day aside for religious instruction, kneeling on cobblestone, and otherwise flailing yourself silly for your sins. It’s been clear for some time that, as far as the Christian calendar is concerned, Sundays were never meant to be fun. That was always reflected in the TV schedules. Sundays were for shows about antiques, the life cycle of the Berkshire porker, and allowing John Craven to tread mud into the BBC’s expense account. Sundays were the day when Jack Hargreaves’s shed dominated the lunch hour on ITV and he’d teach a new generation how to effectively kill a trout using only a briar pipe and a claw hammer. It was the day when we’d watch shows about sheepdogs or, if we preferred danger, ski jumping on BBC2.

It’s not entirely clear when we began to lose that intrinsic sense of Sunday being a religious day but that still doesn’t mean we started associating it with fun. It has became, instead, a day for mowing the lawn or tinkering with the car. Religious self-improvement gave way to a more practical sense of improvement. It now feels like the day where we should assert ourselves in some functional way. Coach youth cricket or learn to speak Spanish. Sport is allowed but work is not. Ideally we’re looking for a sport that resembles work, which obviously leads us towards golf or back towards religion. It also leaves us where we now are, with Sunday not being a “proper” day for those of us who don’t want to take up judo.

Sundays remain, frankly, a pain in the rump end of the week. You can’t do what you want to do for reasons that make absolutely no bloody sense. Shops, cafes, restaurants, and bars are sporadically open or closed, as determined by no logic whatsoever. Walk the local shopping centre and the shuttered shops make as much sense as the places that are open. You can buy erotic knickers at Anne Summers but not a set of spanners from the shop that’s bizarrely closed next door. And don’t tell me that’s what Jesus would have wanted. I don’t believe you.

None of this should be a surprise. Sunday trading has always been the form of consumerism that dare not speak its name.

Yes, it is Sunday and I do want to buy some brake fluid, damn it!

Apparently, there was a time when the only goods it was legal to sell on a Sunday were carrots, which led businesses to sell carrots and give away their wares for “free”. At recently as the 1980s, fish and chip shops in England couldn’t sell fish and chips on a Sunday, but shops that weren’t fish and chip shops could sell fish and chips. These days, small shops in England can stay open as long as they like but anything bigger than 280 square meters can only open for six consecutive hours between 10am and 6pm. Not only does it seem crazy that this comes down to somebody with a tape measure deciding when we can or cannot shop but there isn’t even an agreed closing time. Most town centres start to wind down by 4pm. It’s pitiful to witness. Not with a bang but a whimper…

Not that it’s easy to get anywhere even if you do decide to leave the house and don’t own a car. Check your bus or train timetable and there’s still a page for the “Sundays and Bank Holidays” services which have always been a byword for misery. The irony, of course, is that as our public transport has got progressively worse, the regular weekly timetable has fallen in line with what we previously considered “the Sunday service”. Here in the wild lands where we’re reliant on Northern trains, there used to be two services every hour on local routes during the week, with only one train an hour on Sundays. Now the weekday provision had been downgraded so much that it now matches the services on a Sunday, except it’s Sundays when it’s better to travel since most trains run empty. Sunday has become the best day to head out. And maybe we should. The high street needs stimulation and footfall. It seems perverse to see shops ushering customers out at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon.

There are reasonable arguments about protecting workers as well as the families of workers forced to work on a Sunday, but the same logic couldn’t also be applied to Saturdays, bank holidays, or any random Friday. Sunday, we’re told, is the day when we can take a break from a world of consumer goods. We make the day special in order to protect the exploited British worker from further exploitation.

They are fine arguments but, at the same time, blaming Sundays for poor employment rights seems like an odd way of looking at the problem. So long as those people working extra days are paid for their labour and aren’t forced to work when they don’t want to work. Otherwise it sounds a lot like Elon Musk’s excuse whenever his Xwitter goes down, which amounts to some vague advice to “go outside and look at the sky and spend some time with your friends and family…”

Thanks, Elon, but also, no thanks… What about letting people – and call this a crazy idea – just do what they want to do without some billionaire deciding what’s right and proper. Because that’s why Sundays feel so outdated. Not just outdated but in much need for reform. Approximately 53% of UK adults define themselves by no religion. Sundays still sit on the leading edge of the new week and so long as offices work five days and the “week” begins on a Monday, then Sundays will still be special. But isn’t it time we weren’t treated as a nation that needs to be told to get to bed early or reminded that it’s bath night?

Liberate Sundays and let’s start to have some fun.

@DavidWaywell

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