Sunday

Sunday is the day of the Sun, the seventh day of the ISO week and the first on most calendars printed in the United States. It has been a day of rest since Roman times.

The Latin dies Solis became Sunnandæg in Old English and Sonntag in German. On 7 March 321 Emperor Constantine ordered judges, city people and craftsmen to rest on "the venerable day of the Sun", though farmers were still allowed to bring in the harvest. The Romance languages later swapped the Sun for the Lord, dies Dominica, which is why Spanish has domingo, Italian domenica and French dimanche. Russian voskresenye means "resurrection", and Latvian svētdiena is simply the "holy day".

Some countries still protect it by law. The German constitution keeps Sunday as a day of rest, so most shops there stay shut, a surprise for many tourists looking for groceries. Britain built its own rituals: the Sunday roast with Yorkshire pudding, and the Sunday paper. The Observer, first published in London in 1791, is the oldest Sunday newspaper still in print. In parts of the United States, blue laws long banned the sale of alcohol, or even cars, on Sundays, and a few states kept such rules well into the 21st century.

Pop culture tends to picture it in pajamas. The Small Faces sang "Lazy Sunday" in 1968, and in December 2005 a Saturday Night Live sketch with the same title, two men rapping about cupcakes and The Chronicles of Narnia, became one of the first big hits on the young YouTube. Not every Sunday feeling is cozy, though. The "Sunday scaries", a mild dread about the coming week, sets in around late afternoon, right on schedule for Monday to start the whole cycle again.