“Sunday scaries” refers to the “unique anxiousness that Sunday nights bring.” It’s the awareness—sometimes creeping, sometimes sudden—that another “manic Monday” is imminent. (At this time of year, it’s often accompanied by a related syndrome, the “summer-is-over” shock).
The first time I ran into the “Sunday scaries” was by reading the Sunday New York Times. Cody Delistraty’s September 1 essay—“How Should We Mourn the End of Summer?“—on the end of summer (riffing on his book about “grief”) happened to mention them as “the dread or nervousness about the forthcoming workweek.”
Separately, the Times usually runs a puff column about how somebody spends his Sunday. This week, it was about a food writer who’s now found a niche getting people to cut back on alcohol. Her Sunday routine consists of checking her Fitbit to see if her sleep had enough REM time, followed by a run, a stop at a local bakery, tuna-and-quinoa sandwiches at a local café, a tennis session, supper at an Italian restaurant. I guess her “Sunday scaries” set in during her “skin care routine.”
I have yet to read a “spending Sundays” column that mentioned including the Lord in the Lord’s Day.
The classical Judaeo-Christian vision of how to spend the Sabbath–Saturday or Sunday–included two elements: worship with contemplation and abstention from work. To borrow a John Paul II image, today’s moderns are marking Sundays breathing with one lung: they don’t work, but they don’t worship, either.
Sunday is not just about God. It’s about man, too. It’s about humans regularly encountering what Fribourg philosopher Jozef Bochenski once called the “existential questions.” Why am I here? What am I doing with my life? What’s the meaning of it all? What’s my purpose? And the Ed Koch question: “And how am I doin’” on these points?
Once upon a time, I would have asked whether the “Sunday scaries” come from the distortion of the Lord’s Day by the weekend. The encroachment of “greedy work”–an ethos that imagines “professionalism” is not to embrace the “40-hour workweek” of the blue-collar guys—has contributed to the weekend becoming two things: (1) a chance to do the necessary life things for which there is no room in the rest of the week and (2) a chance to catch one’s breath and some shut-eye.
In that process, the distinctiveness of the “Lord’s Day”–Saturday or Sunday–has been squeezed out by the downtime of the “weekend,” further marginalizing worship to one of those discretionary “things” to be done on the “weekend” where it might fit. (The Church has abetted this through Saturday-night-for-Sunday Masses).
I wouldn’t ask that now because I think we’re in a dangerous post-COVID rebound, where “professionals” and certainly many young people no longer think a full-time, regular job to which one goes is a desirable norm. The pendulum has swung to the other extreme.
But, when I read “what-I-do-on-Sundays” columns or hear about the “Sunday scaries,” I’m compelled to ask: with the loss of the Lord’s Day as a day of contemplation of matters beyond one’s self, have we grown so content with superficiality we no longer notice? And, by extension, could the “Sunday scaries” also be some kind of unconscious wake-up call about the emptiness of one’s life, a transference from these critical things to preoccupation with prioritizing my Monday morning tasks list?
After all, consider the terms in which the “Sunday scaries” are described. “Dread” about the coming week. “Unique anxiousness.” Or the need to deal with the end of summer by working through the five stages of “grief.”
Consider, too, the disproportion of the remedies? We should overcome our “dread” and “anxiety” about the coming workday by … keeping a regular sleep cycle, take a Sunday night bathtub soak, or making a list, then not checking it twice. Overcoming fear and trembling by journaling!
Let me adapt Henry VI: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the psychologists!”
Today’s is not the first generation to face going to work on Monday nor watching summer fade into the rearview mirror. But it seems to be the first to speak in such dramatic–indeed, traumatic–terms about what preceding generations probably just called “life.” And we have to ask ourselves: if somebody can get so wound-around-the-axle by these things, how is it that they seem immune to concern about the gaping chasms of vacuity that filled that Sunday? Is this what happens when Sundays lose their central focus to become an “I” thing?
Yes, people should rest and enjoy themselves. But if the high point of one’s Sunday midday is a debate over tuna and quinoa sandwiches, doesn’t that say something about what might be missing in that day?
And shouldn’t that be scarier than the arrival of “just another manic Monday?”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Thank you, Dr. Grondelski, for penning what is in my mind one of the great cancers of our culture – frenetic Sundays.
I nostalgically remember the Sundays of my youth growing up in Brooklyn. Sundays actually began on Saturday afternoon with weekly Confession followed by an evening when we spent time polishing our shoes, ironing pants and shirts and doing all things necessary in preparation for Sunday. Sunday was a holy day – a day set aside solely for worshipping God, quiet rest and a very specially prepared Sunday meal with family. Sunday was the day when all the stores were closed (except the Portuguese bakery that made fresh rolls and pastries that one stood in line outside to buy right after Holy Mass was over). There was no commercial traffic, everything was at a quiet standstill for the day. The day began with Mass, then breakfast (we were hungry by the time 10:00 AM arrived since we had fasted from everything except water from the previous Midnight), then an afternoon family meal followed perhaps by a walk in the local park with family and visiting with extended family and friends. Sunday evening was time for adults to get ready to return to work the next day (with no angst about it) and children making certain that books were packed and homework completed for returning to school. Sundays were the days when we remembered in a special way to give thanks to God for all that we valued in our lives.
Now compare what I described as a typical Sunday 65 years ago to what Sundays today are like. There is no nuclear family, there are few children in families, the roadways are packed with traffic like every other day of the week, there is no quiet, everyone is in Wal-Mart or Costco, only a minority attend Mass and few of those who are non-Catholic attend any church or synogogue service, many are engaged in their favorite pastime or sport, there is a rush to cram all sorts of activities into Sundays because of a fear of returning to the dreaded work they do, and of course all the stores are open to do what Americans love most – shopping and out-of-control consumerism
And we wonder why the culture is in freefall? We wonder why Americans experience anxiety every Sunday evening? Sundays now express what Americans value most.
Your vision is not ancient history: it describes Protestant Bern (Switzerland) when I lived there 13 years ago. Stores closed Saturdays by 5/5:30; church bells rang around 7 to “invite Sunday in”; everything closed Sundays but one local bakery in each district that also closed around 1 pm; afterwards, if you wanted staples, two choices — one shop in the main train station downtown or a gas station on the highway out of town; restaurants that served on SUndays had to close Mondays (ruhe Montag – quiet Monday). This was 2008-11 in nominally Protestant Bern. Catholic Fribourg, on the other hand, was more AMerican.
Maybe this song should be re released with “Sunday” and a few new wrinkles thrown in instead?
Monday, Monday, so good to me (Sunday, Sunday, so tough for me…e.g.)
Monday mornin’, it was all I hoped it would be
Oh, Monday mornin’, Monday mornin’ couldn’t guarantee
That Monday evenin’ you would still be here with me
Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day
Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way
On Monday mornin’ you gave me no warnin’ of what was to be
Oh, Monday, Monday, how could you leave and not take me?
Every other day, every other day
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes
You can find me cryin’ all of the time…………..
Happy routines that end up in nothingness and worse is Grondelski’s cryptic message. No mention of God. What I offer here is someone whose routine is deathly boring or touched with anxiety. What most healthy people, satisfied immersed in their solipsistic routines are not normally scary about or dread. At least on the surface.
She lives in a nursing home most of the time, the rest in hospital stays. Young in appearance with daughters and grandchildren, rarely seen. Husband gone his ways. Inflicted with one serious condition after another she still manages to smile on occasion.
Saturday was an occasion when I brought her the living Christ. She had just returned from a hospital and a long unsuccessful treatment. She lost her former larger room now settled in a smaller one with a beautiful view of distant woods and flower garden below her window. The sun shone in. She smiled beautifully.
As originally envisioned, the Saturday Vigil Mass was a blessing, which I witnessed first-hand in two situations: first, a city hospital, where medical personnel were able to perform two good and holy works, attend Sunday Mass (on Saturday evening) and take care of the sick on Sunday; second, a Jersey Shore parish which had three Vigil Masses during the summer to accommodate vacationers whom they would never been able to serve with only Sunday morning Masses.
That said, I was a weekend assistant in a senior-citizen parish, which had three Vigil Masses and three Sunday morning Masses. The three Vigil Masses had close to 1000 at each, with the morning Masses having no more than 300 each. During the homily one Sunday, I polled the Vigilantes: More than 90% had not been to a Sunday Mass in over a decade!
I realize that Saturday evening Masses — like Social Security — are untouchable. That said, I wrote a piece for Adoremus last year, based on a good graduate student’s JCL thesis, that shows the nonsense of a “vigil” or “imitating the Jewish day that begins at sunset” were all post-factum justifications for a process that began in northern Italian Alpine ski villages to canonically extend the clock as to when one could “fulfill” one’s Sunday obligation. It was not theology, it was simple canonical fiat. That process merged with the “weekendization” of Western culture which, coupled with the disappearance of blue laws, made Sunday indistinguishable from any other day of the week. At best, it lobbed on to the “weekend” as a “relax time,” except that the proliferation of “greedy work” during the week pushed all sorts of other “stuff” that has to be done (but is not strictu sensu, “work,” e.g., buying your groceries) into the weekend. That, in turn, “optionalized” other things and, in a privatized, secular culture, that optinalization came to include worship. But this is a whole, bigger story. Focusing on this issue, it’s not just the vacuity of Sunday but also the melodrama of words: if you are “grieving” the loss of summer, you clearly have never felt grief at a human death. If you are in “dread” that Monday is coming, what will you do when it’s the Grim Reaper instead?
Father Peter, how a propos – “Vigilantes”!
Reminds me of “The Land Without a Sunday” an essay by Maria von Trapp. It reflects on her Austrian neighbors visiting Russia and being shocked that “ Russia had done away with Sunday”. “The absence of Sunday seemed to be the root of all evil.” She describes a system in which there is no longer just one day of rest for everyone. “The atmosphere was one of constant rush and drive. . . .” Seems to me to be a perfect plan for and evolving feature of a godless, communist nation.
and doesn’t the big chicken outfit get criticized sometimes because they’re not open Sundays – wasn’t there something with a big highway out east that they were saying it was illegal to not be open that day??
Well, I’m not sure I agree with Chick-Fil-A’s argument there. They got a concession to run food services on the New York Thruway, and the NYT is open 24/7, including Sundays. Even Catholic moral theology would not have said travelers must fast because it’s Sunday, nor that their travel is limited to the emergency and necessary.
Interesting comment about Protestant Bern.
Around these parts (southern Ontario), the two groups that can generally be counted on to not be open/working on Sunday are the Christian (Dutch) Reform and the Mennonites.