This is the first in an envisaged series of occasional posts on the history of the weekend, inspired by our Dear Leader’s announcement that “the world has changed from the days when we were a five-day-a-week society”. Only the formalities now await Australia renaming its days using numbers from 1 to 365; thus cleansing the calendar of distracting months and old-fashioned weeks to recognise each day’s new status as an undifferentiated time unit for employers to dispose of as they see fit, in the neverending national task of maximising their profits. But I get ahead of myself.
The first building block that ultimately led to the now superfluous, nay redundant, nay anachronistic weekend was of course the invention of the 365-day year itself, and here it seems that a terrible historical injustice has been done to Julius Caesar, who figured this out with assistance from the Greek astronomer Sosigenes in 46 BC. Before Julius got on the job, the Roman calendar was based on lunar cycles, which produced a 354-day year that buggered up the annual relationship with the seasons. Julius thus sacked the moon and installed the sun as the annual regulator, even figuring out the extra day every fourth cycle leap-year trick. With all the hard work done, in one of the most outstanding examples of someone metaphorically coming along sixteen centuries later and putting the last brick on the Empire State Building and then claiming architectural credit, the contemporary calendar is known not as the Julian but the Gregorian calendar. Unbelievably, this is only because Pope Gregory XIII and his crowd technically improved the annual measure by skipping 3 Julian leap days in every 400 years. I mean to say; this is akin to a proof-reader fixing a typo and claiming authorship of the book!
In the next of this occasional series, I aim to delve into the mystery of how the Julian calendar came to be divided into the now superfluous, nay redundant, nay anachronistic lots of seven.
I thought that it was a nice touch that there was one moment in time, over the last few years, when the scientific community decided to skip a second. The clocks all held their breath, so to speak, for a couple of seconds and then continued to chime away methodically as usual. That analog to digital conversion can be messy.
Unfortunately, I think that Howard is right about the fact that the five-day work week is no longer standard in Australia (and has actually never been standard in many parts of the world). Of course, the question that he so conveniently avoided with that statement was whether or not this is a good thing.
On the main topic of your post: The transition to the solar calendar has not been particularly complete – since so many festivals are still celebrated on dates that coincide with the full moon etc… I find this amazingly difficult to get my head around and can never seem to predict the timing of any of the festivals here. Next year, I’m going to make sure that my calendar includes the lunar cycles so that I don’t have to think as much.
I think that Howard is right about the fact that the five-day work week is no longer standard in Australia
Does anyone know if there is an empirical measure to settle this as fact?
More importantly, the announcement is of course part of the campaign to remove overtime and penalty rates for weekend work. While they remain, so does the weekend, or at least the weekend of the mind (and pay packet).
Anecdote only but of my friends and family, I’d say at least 50 percent worked non-traditional hours including weekends and nights, with only some of them getting penalty rates.
I’ve worked for at least a few hours on every weekend for the past four or five months, which is depressing.
Well, I say let’s take on this anti-weekend sentiment and institute indefinite Parliamentary sittings, continuing until all the legislation backlogged is dealt with, with nobody going home to their electorates until it’s passed or rejected, along with fixed terms.
Let’s all vote every four years on the first Saturday in Brumaire.
I suggest the 18th Brumaire. Good day for populists who appeal to the lumpenproletariat.
I agree Liam. I’ll look into the past campaigns in a future post in the series. It was a rather fascinating constellation of forces and causes, and there may be some useful lessons for today’s Save the Weekend Coalition.
I’m loath to ask about personal stuff in the ‘sphere Kate, but I’d be interested if you can offer more detail. The main question is whether you and the 50 per cent of your friends and family who work on weekends without extra compensation are managerial, professional or creative types, who have long had the privilege of trading time in kind during the week. Generally, this class (perhaps, rudely, we might call them a ‘semi-leisure’ class) can reclaim their weekends at their discretion if necessary (so long as they also give up Wednesday’s golf, or Friday’s long lunch, or whatever). Or are we talking ordinary wage slaves working weekends without compensation?
Chris, I think that you might like to try ACIRRT and the researchers at RMIT for data on working time. Probably stuff on the websites and no doubt some results published in Work, Employment and Society. Unfortunately, I’m working at this time right now so I can’t look it up!
Oops, getting my Australian and British journals mixed up. It should be Labour and Industry and the bloke at RMIT is Iain Campbell.
Hear hear! Liam.
I also say we find Gregorians and hit them with full size Aztec calenders to show them the true meaning of a smart arse.
German Christians have an interesting approach to calendars by the way… I don’t think Homer would approve.
Winfried Roehmel, a spokesman for the region’s Catholic archdiocese, said: “It is not acceptable to pose naked in a church. The right way to approach the Holy Scriptures is not by pulling your pants down.”
Glad that’s all been cleared up now.
Good points Chris, your assessment of my numbers is correct. The trade-offs for extra work do tend to be better for white-collar folks like myself, indeed, and even when I’ve had to work weekends for no extra pay I’ve always been given time in lieu.
In my working life of over three decades mostly in Australia, most of my friends and colleagues routinely have done some ‘work’ (i.e. activities associated with their paid employment) over weekends. The main difference is that those whose paid employment is ‘salaried/professional’ don’t usually get remunerated directly for it. On the other hand, they tend to have more freedom than others to structure their professional activities around family, recreation, entertainment etc.
Quite ironically, I now run a small business with my partner. We very consciously – and perhaps anachronistically – just refuse to trade on weekends. We also close for lunch. Bugger the extra few hundred bucks we might make a week – I’d rather have an hour’s break in my day and go fishing on weekends.
On the subject of alternative lunar-based dates for elections, my vote would be for Beltane rather than Brumaire. Elections are all about conception, gestation and renewal. Let’s put the sex back into politics