Mon-Sun calendars

[Jack K]

Yesterday I was looking online for a printable 2011 calendar. I was amazed how many of those I found were arranged as Mon-Sun calendars, with Monday as the first day of the week. I realize that’s been the norm in business calendars for a while now. But I didn’t want the week to start with Monday, especially since this was a project for church.

What do the rest of you think? Is this a sad state of affairs? Or was I too picky, and it’s no big deal how the days are arranged on a piece of paper? Under what circumstances might you use a calendar arranged Mon-Sun?

And what about those of you for whom calling the first day the “Lord’s Day” is a big issue? Or those who don’t recognize other holidays? Is finding a printed calendar that fits these parameters a difficult ordeal? When would it matter to you?

 

[Steve Curtis]

Reflective of this cultural ignorance, there is actually a question in Trivial Pursuit that asks what is the first day of the week . . . I assume it is there because the answer is no longer a "no-brainer."

 

[TimV]

Depends on the country. Isn't Monday the first day in countries like France and Turkey?

 

[Wayne]

Checking the little pop-up calendar on my computer (Ubuntu 10.10 OS) just now, it has Sunday displayed as the first day of the week.
Can't print from that pop-up, however.

 

[TexanRose]

I remember being puzzled, some fifteen years ago, when a friend from the Netherlands brought us calendar-related gifts that showed Monday as the first day of the week. I concluded that it was a European thing.

However, come to think of it, I do hear non-religious acquaintances here in the US refer to Sunday as the last day of the weekend, and Monday as the beginning of the new week. If you don't keep Sunday as the Sabbath, I can see how you would end up lumping Saturday and Sunday together.

I wouldn't use a calendar with Monday as the first day of the week.

 

[LawrenceU]

It is becoming the norm in the US for the same reason it is now the norm in Europe: the loss of Christian influence upon a culture.

I actually had to answer a question of a youngster at church a few weeks ago regarding this. He wanted to know why we worshipped on Sunday since the Lord was resurrected on the first day of the week and the early church met on that day. He had figured that the reason we 'didn't' was because it was easier to meet on the weekend.

 

[JBaldwin]

I, too, noticed this a few years back when friends sent me a calendar from England. It had Monday as the first day. Personally, I don't like it.

 

[TimV]

Wow, Lawrence, that's a crazy story.

 

[LawrenceU]

Wow, Lawrence, that's a crazy story.

Yeah, crazy and sad. I was actually pretty shaken by it for a host of reasons; more than I can share here. Suffice it to say this: we have to be very intentional in the raising of children in the church.

 

[Edward]

As noted above, it's the norm in much of Europe. Only the calendars with pretty pictures for American tourists have the Sunday start. I've never seen one with that arrangement in a German home.

I've always thought that the Monday start calendars would make great gifts for your 7th Day Adventist friends.

 

[Curt]

Great reminder, Lawrence. There are a lot of assumptions we can make about what the next generation (or the previous several) understands. W shouldn't make any. Schaeffer (and probably quite a few other folks) used to talk about a Christian Memory. Such memory no longer affects how the society thinks, acts, legislates, parties - and especially, worships.

 

[PuritanZealot]

Every calendar I have seen in England starts with Monday, we even felt it was something of a novelty to find a TBS calendar that starts with the Lords Day at the beginning. I had never thought of it before. To be perfectly honest with you, most people in the UK (I say most as in, almost everyone) regard Friday as drinking night, Saturday as shopping day, Saturday night as second drinking night and Sunday as recovery and house/garden work day. That is the experience I have had with every member of family and friends outside of the Church. Obviously inside the Church congregation it is entirely different but that's obvious. I had never realised how far we had come in Europe!

 

[21st Century Calvinist]

I have 3 (2010) calendars dotted around my house that I bought/was given in Scotland. None of them are "christian" calenders- they all show pictures of Highland scenery. On all of them Sunday is the first day of the week. I personally dislike calendars/diaries that have Monday as first day of the week.

 

[SRoper]

I just had to switch my calendar in Outlook to start on Monday because it seems to be the only way to get Outlook to match our company's week numbering system. I don't like it at all.

 

[LawrenceU]

Did you ever notice that in most calendar books Saturday and Sunday take up the same amount of space that a single day in the rest of the week occupies? That makes them almost impossible to use as a pastor!

 

[interalia]

My wife gave me a nice watch that has a perpetual calendar. The first day on the weekly calendar is Sunday - and in red, with the six others in black. It should be noted it is an American-made (or comapny, at least) watch.

 

[MarieP]

Wow, Lawrence, that's a crazy story.

Yeah, crazy and sad. I was actually pretty shaken by it for a host of reasons; more than I can share here. Suffice it to say this: we have to be very intentional in the raising of children in the church.

On the bright side, he cared enough to ask about it... he knew we ought to meet on the day that Christ rose from the dead, the first day of the week. And if in his own mind the church wasn't doing it, it was good for him to ask! Reminds me a bit of someone my pastor knows who, when he became a Christian, he started reading his Bible from Genesis and stopped eating pork until he got to the Gospels!

But yeah, its sad that he didn't already know that, yes, we do meet on the day Christ rose from the dead. Shows the level of understnading today in regards to the Lord's Day, which is a wonderful gift from our Savior!

 

[fishingpipe]

I use Google calendar for personal and business needs. It starts with Sunday. Sunday and Saturday each have as much space as the rest of the days.

Starting with a Monday would really throw me off. It doesn't feel right at all.

 

[Brother John]

In regards to the calendar I have a question for yall. Why did the early Christians, Catholics and the "Christian West" maintain the pagan god names of the week? Was there ever an effort to change the names of the week? Am I way off or has anyone else wondered this. How different is the Jewish week from ours?

 

[Rich Koster]

I guess the post-modernist disdain for anything old can be applied to calendars also.

 

[TimV]

In regards to the calendar I have a question for yall. Why did the early Christians, Catholics and the "Christian West" maintain the pagan god names of the week? Was there ever an effort to change the names of the week? Am I way off or has anyone else wondered this. How different is the Jewish week from ours

You can bet at least a 100,000,000 or so people have wondered.

Always start with Scriptural examples. Abib was the first month in the start when God instituted the seasonal liturgical year. Then after the Babylonian captivity the Jews changed the name to Nisan, which is a foreign word, and it was used in Scripture without any condemnation. I don't know what Nisan means, and I doubt most Jews did, and I doubt most who did cared.

There were deals made. In the Germanic languages the fourth day of the week is named after Odin, or Wotan, which is where we get Wednesday, but in German they call it midweek, since Odin was the god most likely to have been associated with God the Father.

So I think the bottom line is that a word is a word. Easter is the old English word for Passover, and is used as such in the KJV. The fact that it's a Germanic goddess name meant nothing, any more than the word we use for God doesn't remotely resemble the Hebrew word, and the Spanish and French word for God probably came from Zeus. Who cares??? When you get into word origin it's interesting, but that's all. Interesting. A word only means what in means, and the fourth day of the week doesn't mean you're honoring father god of the Norse, and then automatically mean you're honoring the messenger god of the Latins by switching to Spanish. That would just be stupid! The words don't mean any more or less than the fourth day of the week.

 

[ADKing]

With a loss of Sabbath convictions in the church itself, it is hardly surprising that the culture is forgetting it too. Perhaps this is a good wake up call. By the way, this is one of the reasons why I really appreciate calendars that actually use the term Lord's Day (instead of Sunday)on the first day of the week. My point here is not to debate whether or not this is necessary, but from a merely pragmatic standpoint, it is really hard to rearrange the days of the week without it looking strange. I realize that merely using the term "Sabbath" or "Lord's Day" doesn't actually convince anyone or mean that we keep it biblically, but at the very least it prevents it from fading entirely out of the consciousness of people.

 

[Kevin]

The French here use mon-sun calenders. I always assumed it was a french/english thing.

 

[PointingToChrist]

Does it matter when looking at it on paper? Your paper calendar could start the week with Wednesday for all it matters, as long as Sunday is still the Sabbath. I prefer Sunday to be shown first on the calendar grid, but it's simply for my eyes to set straight what I'm looking at.

 

[Peairtach]

People are ignorant.

But if Saturday and Lord's Day/Sabbath (Sunday) are called the weekend, and Monday is the first day of the working week it is easy to see how peops get confused if they are not reminded of the proper order.

Eschatalogically speaking the day change of the Sabbath from the last day of the week to the first day of the week, apart from anything else, reminds us that with Christ's resurrection the new creation has commenced in principle and our redemption has been achieved, and that we are looking forward to the consummation of a new creation and redemption that we already have. Celebrating the Sabbath on the first day of the week has a more forward-looking aspect to it. Under the Old Testament the Sabbath had more of a backward-looking aspect to God's work in the Old Creation, and the future was not as clear in its aspect as it is for us.

With the resurrection of Christ and our own spiritual resurrection we have crossed the brow of the hill and are on a downward path to glory. We are in the last days, even although, as many of us suspect, the last days will go on for thousands of years yet. A new week commenced with Christ's resurrection, and with it a New World of the ''already........................not yet."

 

[Jack K]

People are ignorant.

But if Saturday and Lord's Day/Sabbath (Sunday) are called the weekend, and Monday is the first day of the working week it is easy to see how peops get confused if they are not reminded of the proper order.

Eschatalogically speaking the day change of the Sabbath from the last day of the week to the first day of the week, apart from anything else, reminds us that with Christ's resurrection the new creation has commenced in principle and our redemption has been achieved, and that we are looking forward to the consummation of a new creation and redemption that we already have. Celebrating the Sabbath on the first day of the week has a more forward-looking aspect to it. Under the Old Testament the Sabbath had more of a backward-looking aspect to God's work in the Old Creation, and the future was not as clear in its aspect as it is for us.

With the resurrection of Christ and our own spiritual resurrection we have crossed the brow of the hill and are on a downward path to glory.

Agreed. I think it's one of those seemingly little things that ends up making a significant difference in how we think; not only how we think about our day of worship, but how we think about God's work in this world. I was wondering if maybe I was just being fussy to be bothered by it, but you've convinced me it's an issue worth caring about, at least a little.

 

[Kevin]

When ever I hear someone say that Monday is the 1st day Because sat/Sun is the weekend, I just remind them that "a week is like a stick, it has 2 ends. A start & a finish"

 

[travstar]

After having read this thread, I am going to start all my weeks on Thursday.

 

[Skyler]

I think of bookends.

 

[PeterR]

I concluded that it was a European thing.

It's impossible (As far as I know) to buy a calendar in Hungary that starts with the Biblical first day of the week. On the other hand Portugal and Greece have numbering in their day names which should ensure they do it the right way - not saying they actually do!

I wouldn't use a calendar with Monday as the first day of the week.

We send a calendar to customers who have spent more than £300 in the course of a year (there are usually 6 to 8 of these, but they're not always the same people from year to year). The one we often send featuring Ross-shire had Monday as the first day one year, so I wrote them a letter, and the last two years they've been back to the Biblically correct order!

Your sister-in-law's brother-in-law (and brother-in-law's cousin's husband)

Peter

---------- Post added at 06:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:54 PM ----------

Why did the early Christians, Catholics and the "Christian West" maintain the pagan god names of the week? Was there ever an effort to change the names of the week?

Further to my other message, the Greeks and Portuguese don't use the old idol-names, and a number of other languages from French to Hungarian and Romanian (if I remember aright) have names for Saturday based on "Sabbath" and for Sunday based on "The Lord's (Day)".