Sunday Night Feeling

If you are reading this on a Sunday afternoon it may have already begun. You may have felt its first symptoms, sensed the first wave of gloom spreading across your day. What is the cause of this odd feeling? Simply Sunday.

I call this the “Sunday Night feeling”. It is a troubling combination of agitation and malaise, not quite a real depression, but a kind of dismay or dread. There is historic precedent for the melancholy of this day. In medieval times Sundays were holy days with no work but festivals, pageants, and public feasts made Sunday a joyous day. With the Reformation, Calvin and Luther knocked all the fun out of Sunday; there was still no work but holiness became a kind of labor. In the Protestant faith Sunday became a day for worship and study only. English settlers brought this Sunday custom to the colonies. In Virginia, in 1610, all you could do on Sunday was go to church and study the catechism. This was law; the penalty for a first offense was loss of a week’s food; for the second, whipping; and, for the third, death.

Of course we’ve lightened up over time but “Blue laws” – named for the blue paper on which Sunday edicts were written in New Hampshire, are not gone from our national consciousness.

Part of the Sunday night feeling is regret. Once again the weekend did not live up to our hopes and expectations. The weekend we’d hoped for, the one we imagine when we say, “TGIF” never really comes. What we crave on Sundays is more freedom, but what we experience is the collision of two great American values: freedom and work. We keep thinking that we can work our way to freedom, but the Sunday night feeling belies the truth. On Sunday, it feels like the more we work, the more we are trapped as Monday morning approaches.

The frenzy of each week often feels like a roller-coaster ride. On Sunday night we are pulling out of the station; the cable engages to pull us into another week, chug-a-chug-a-chug; Monday morning we crest the hill and here comes the week’s wild ride: commuting, committees, decisions, difficult people, strained budgets, office politics, and balancing home and work. There are wild swings and sharp corners; and no matter how many times you’ve been around this course that last whipping curve feels like a surprise each time. We fly through it and then it slows again…chug-a-chug-a-chug…you’re back to the station; it’s Friday and the attendant is saying, “Push the bar forward and exit to your left.” We are free.

Then suddenly it’s Sunday again and it feels way too soon to be back in that car. Once you get to the top of the first hill there is no stopping; it’s just a matter of style. You may close your eyes and grip the bar, or throw your arms up and scream, but whatever you do, you’re on this ride till Friday.

No wonder people are walking away, leaving jobs, and choosing voluntary simplicity; that stomach dropping feeling stops being fun by the 100th ride; the mortgage and credit card bills feel like the bar holding you in your seat forever. At about six PM on Sunday night, when the anxiety about the upcoming week starts to gnaw at you, you want off.

Even those of us who like our jobs get this feeling, but I think this is also why the want-ads are so fat on Sundays. On Sundays we are in the mood to fantasize, to do a bit of grass-is-greener imagining: Maybe a different job, a different field, more money? But Sunday gloom is an equal opportunity employer. It comes to those who make lots of money and those who don’t make enough.

This is why Sunday night TV is so popular. We watch the big made-for-TV movies, the tear-jerkers and melodramas. We want distraction from what will come with the ringing alarm we set so reluctantly tonight. It’s Monday we are dreading. This is not all in your head. Consider this: Almost half of all illnesses begin on Monday and Monday is the busiest day in hospital emergency rooms; and most distressing, of all seven days of the week, Monday has the highest rate of suicide.

Maybe instead of gearing up on Sunday nights we need to wind down. Maybe we could get up a little earlier and step outside to see the dawn or listen to music instead of the news. Maybe we can go more gently into this good week.