On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 1:10 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > It could also be related to Catholicism: God created the Heavens and > the Earth and on the seventh day he rested. Which means that his week > started on Monday :-) >
---- A point of clarification: The Jewish tradition came before the Catholic one, and their day of rest is Saturday (Friday night to Sat night). So according to their reckoning, what came to be known as Sunday was the first day of the week--the day after the day of rest. Christians inherited this reckoning since they came out of the Jewish faith. Early Christians moved the weekly day of worship and, consequently, rest to Sunday because it is the Lord's day--the day of Christ's Resurrection. From what I can tell, though, Sunday continued to be considered the first day of the week throughout Christendom (see, for example, the counting of feriae from Sunday). Also, theologically speaking, the new covenant came with Christ and his Resurrection is all about new life, so it would make sense for the celebration of the Lord's day to initiate a new week. It's worth noting, though, that the seven days and their names based on astrological bodies predate Christianity and even after Christ are not universally used. The calendar in use in the Roman Empire at the time Christianity entered the scene was that introduced by Julius Caesar (the Julian) in 45 BC, which was used in the West until the Gregorian reform in AD 1582. The early Julian calendar didn't have the names we have today; I can't even tell if they really considered the start of a week as anything significant (seems more focused on month/mid-month for significance). Also, I read something that suggested Saturday (based on how the hours were counted in relation to the astral bodies) would be the logical first, if any. As for ISO, I can't quite figure out why they set the first day as Monday. Maybe just so "weekend" would be literal, or maybe just to be iconoclastic, or maybe something as banal as it making it easier to count the weeks or something. I wouldn't put it past them. :) What I am getting at is that to discuss "Monday" as a thing in itself, i.e., something significant as opposed to Sunday for starting a week, is arbitrary; why not have "Thursday" be the first day? You'll answer perhaps that Monday "starts" your work week, but maybe I have Tuesday and Wednesday off (and work Thurs-Mon), so Thursday would be my start of week. Any changing at this point would be arbitrary and probably parochial, so as for why secular folks still (or should still) use it, my answer would be that it's simply a matter of convention and familiarity for many, many people in this world due to historical circumstances. And as you point out, a lot of digital tools people use adopt (and ergo reinforce) this convention. You could certainly make the case for following the arbitrary definition from ISO, but people don't generally bother to change w/o a good reason, i.e., I think you'd be fighting an uphill battle. Not sure it'd be worth it. After all, even ISO hasn't effected a general change in this reckoning. -ambrose ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
