What happened to your day of rest?

BY EILEEN BRADY
​SALT MAGAZINE

​If you’re sitting down with this magazine, perhaps with a hot cup of tea, you’re probably not the person who needs to read this particular article. Maybe you should pass it on to one of those people who says, “I’m so busy” as a badge of honor. 
Tap Mrs. Busy on the shoulder and ask her to look up from her smartphone. Tell Mr. Busy to read after midnight, since he brags that he only needs five hours of sleep. Slip it to him on Sunday as he sits in the bleachers at his kid’s sporting event. 
It’s now a 24/7 world, and we’ve been conditioned to think that more is better, convenience is mandatory, and rest is a four-letter word.
For 2,000 years, it was much different: A day of sabbath was observed across cultures, with time for worship and repose. Only in the past several decades has it eroded to the point where nearly any activity — shopping, sports, bar-hopping, working — can happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 
“Sabbath was initially intended not as a heavy theological mandate, but as common sense — because we need to renew,” said the Rev. Dr. Tom Stephenson, pastor at Wilmington’s First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The word “sabbath” means “to rest,” or even “to cease,” which makes the action more intentional, Stephenson said. 

​Resting on the seventh day is the essence of the Fourth Commandment, and it applies not only to free humans but to their servants and their animals. In the Old Testament, Stephenson said, it was about justice — even the slaves had to have days off. 
“The wisdom of that is that even God takes a break, that God has downtime,” Stephenson said.
Even farm fields are supposed to be allowed a sabbath every seventh year, though it never quite caught on. “There’s a time when the ground lies fallow — we forgot the fallow part. We’ve bought into a culture that says, ‘What have you done for me lately?’” Stephenson said.
Both Stephenson and Victoria DeSensi, assistant professor of psychology at Wilmington College, point to a cultural shift in which downtime is actively discouraged. DeSensi, in her early 30s, remembers a time when stores were not open on Sundays — but now many are open 24 hours a day, including on Thanksgiving. Stephenson believes the post-World War II industrial revolution kicked off the notion of working without rest, and he remembers his father in the early 1960s holding three jobs to make sure the family owned its home instead of renting. 
“It’s no surprise that when we got to the mid-’60s, that families were falling apart in record numbers,” he said.
From a psychological perspective, DeSensi said, a social norm has been created, and people think they’re now supposed to go shopping on a holiday that for hundreds of years had been a down day of family and food. Most stores opened their doors in 2013 on Thanksgiving, a formerly untouchable American holiday.
“Blue laws” that ban Sunday activities in many states, dating to the 1600s, have gradually been repealed, with a few still on the books.
A couple of major companies have resisted the seven-day trend: Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby. Chick-fil-A’s 1,700 fast-food restaurants and Hobby Lobby’s 560 craft stores are closed on Sundays. Chick-fil-A’s founder believes that “all franchised Chick-fil-A operators and their restaurant employees should have an opportunity to rest, spend time with family and friends, and worship if they choose to do so,” according to a statement on the company’s website. 
Nordstrom department stores, Costco warehouse clubs, and Menards hardware stores did not open this past Thanksgiving. Menards instead issued the following statement: “As a family-owned company, Menards believes Thanksgiving is a time of togetherness. With this in mind, we will be closed on Thanksgiving Day so you and our Team Members can celebrate this joyous time with family and friends.”
The cultural expectations also play out in regard to when families should spend time together, or how sacred church services truly are.
Stephenson and his wife have lived in Georgia and North Carolina, where there remains a Southern standard of keeping Sundays and Wednesday evenings clear of obligations outside family and church. Coaches of youth sports would push parents to allow their children to compete and practice on those days, but the Southern expectations and norms gave the parents the backbone to push back — with the parents winning out, Stephenson said. 
The any-day-is-sports-day philosophy is alive and well in Ohio and plenty of other states, however. A study published in the March 2013 edition of Review of Religious Research found that pastors of 16 “declining” American and Canadian Protestant churches blamed outside activities, particularly youth sports, as the main reason families have stopped attending services. 
Some churches have responded to the loss of families by adding alternative service times on Saturday, so church members can attend both sports and worship, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. Other churches have instituted their own sports leagues to counter the exodus.
Stephenson said he sees many families whose children participate in multiple extracurricular activities each week, and he worries most that the children themselves are not able to have their own downtime, their own sabbath, in order to rejuvenate themselves.
The culture of academia supposedly embraces the idea of a sabbatical (based in “sabbath”), but professors and their students are not immune to the pressures of being on call or studying all hours of the day. DeSensi worries about the potential for burnout in some of her colleagues, and she knows that the majority of her students at Wilmington College, unlike her peers in graduate school at Indiana University, work jobs to help pay for school, in addition to their academic obligations. 
“It's something I've had to remind myself, that these students are definitely overworked,” DeSensi said.
Students are also now in nearly constant communication with other people through social media. Nearly 75 percent of adults ages 18 to 44 sleep within reach of their cellphones, according to a Stanford University study. 
According to various medical studies, lack of sleep leads to many health issues, including stroke, obesity, diabetes, anxiety, depression, and the top U.S. killers: heart disease and cancer. Lack of sleep also causes people to make careless mistakes and have poor judgment, which can affect their daily work or their safety in an automobile.
“The restorative qualities (are) obviously something essential to physical health,” DeSensi said. “It's kind of ironic, because people are trying to be more productive, but they end up making preventable errors.”
DeSensi said she personally tries to be more efficient during work hours so she can leave for home at a decent time, where she uses her 35-minute commute to decompress. She also strives to get at least seven hours of sleep each night.
Stephenson admitted that pastors — with their round-the-clock access to congregants — are as guilty as anyone when it comes to burning the candle at both ends. However, he said, his current congregation is extremely understanding when he does find he needs time off, and he has tried to make sure he takes some time for himself. Like computers, he said, we sometimes just need to reboot.
When a day of rest is not built into cultural expectations, and vacation days frequently go to waste, workers often become less productive because they are exhausted. A recent Harvard study estimated that sleep deprivation costs American companies $63.2 billion a year in lost productivity. 
Many U.S. corporations are learning this lesson. Google, named for the fourth time the best company to work for in the United States, offers its workers nap pods, maintains 1,000 bicycles on its campus for workers’ use, and gives employees their own garden space to grow vegetables, among other innovations that keep employees happy and productive.
The United States, however, is the only developed country in the world without a single legally required paid vacation day or holiday, according to the Center for Economic Policy and Research. By law, every country in the European Union has at least four work weeks of paid vacation. And, unlike many American workers, the vacation is used each year.
Eileen Brady is the co-author of “Images of America: Wilmington.”
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SIDEBAR:
A FEW WAYS TO SPEND A DAY OF REST
•Determine what “rest” truly means to you. Some people are introverted, so being alone and without the company of others helps them recharge. Extroverts, however, will find it rejuvenating to be among people.
•Unplug from electronic noise. Shut down your computer, your smartphone, your television. Remove your Bluetooth and your children’s earbuds. Listen to the sounds of nature instead. Hear the wind blow through trees, the rain pelting the ground, the birds chirping.
•Enjoy family time by playing board games or reading aloud. But don’t always include family in your own personal sabbath: People also need time alone with their thoughts, or with their spouse, away from children. Children, too, need time without noise and expectations and electronics.
•Take a rest from worry and activities that stress you out. Don’t pay bills or work on your taxes, even if it’s quiet and you’re alone. 
•Remember time for recreation and hobbies. “Recreate” means to “make new again.” Paint, draw, look at art, gaze at nature. 
•Slowly savor a well-cooked meal. If you enjoy cooking, create a meal that you will enjoy. If cooking stresses you out, have something cooked for you by a professional.