It’s a steamy summer weekend, so what do you do?
You toss the kids (and/or the grandkids) into the car and head for the
shore. Time to get some respite from the heat with those cooling ocean
breezes, and to commune with nature for a few
hours. Ah, but when you get there, you find that several thousand of
your closest friends and neighbors had the same idea. With perhaps
three square feet of sand to call your own and the water as crowded as
the sole working elevator in a high rise office
building, you make the best of a fine tradition that goes back many,
many decades.
Or does it?
For the first couple of centuries after the
Pilgrims first anchored the Mayflower in Provincetown Harbor, work was
life, and life was work. No thought was given toward leisure time; in
fact, in Puritan Massachusetts, the one day that work
was forbidden was to be spent at the meeting house for the Sabbath
services – which lasted all day. Only after the Civil War when
manufacturing and huge factories became the way of life for hundreds of
thousands of people, many of them immigrants, was there
something – though still paltry - called “leisure time.” The
well-to-do had enjoyed leisure time for years, and built large, ornate
“cottages” in resort areas such as Newport, Rhode Island, to get away
during the hot summers in style. But little thought
was given to whether the working class even deserved time off and/or
access to recreational amenities.
One man changed all that, a man still held up as a
symbol of overwhelming capitalism, but a man who knew a good thing when
it swam up and bit him in the posterior.
In 1909, Edsel Ford publicly announced, "Every man
needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation....The Ford
Company always has sought to promote [an] ideal home life for its
employees. We believe that in order to live properly
every man should have more time to spend with his family." And in 1926,
Henry Ford made his son’s words reality: he shut down all his
factories for all of Saturday and Sunday, thus creating The Weekend. No
one had done it before, but Ford had cars to sell
and knew that people would by them only if they had leisure time in
which to enjoy them. What a concept!
How interesting the tie between your family's beloved Fords and leisure weekend time! We are looking forward to the upcoming weekend festivities. Brad and Cheryl's hard work in wedding planning will come to fruition and lots of family and friends will be on hand to celebrate. But even this event points to the changing nature of the concept of weekends and leisure time.
This wedding will be held on a Sunday. When we were growing up, this just wasn't done--the phrase "non-traditional" didn't even cover such an idea. Sundays were held as sacrosanct. Businesses were ALL closed. You went to church and spent time with your families on Sundays. Period. As we all have seen, Sundays are no longer off limits for working, shopping, alcohol or weddings! It seems the weekend pendulum is swinging back to the earlier days when it made no difference what day of the week it was for workers, shopkeepers, liquor stores or young couples seeking to be married.
As a child, I really did not enjoy Sundays. I was supremely bored, so I still enjoy the freedom that Sundays now bring. It's still a weekend day, but with the added benefit of open shops and family weddings!!! Now I love Sundays-- though I wasn't a big fan of Sunday nights before I retired! And it will be a very special Sunday July 13 2014! See you there!
No comments:
Post a Comment