From Sabbath To Weekend: Recreation, Sabbatarianism, And The Emergence Of The Weekend

Abstract

From the 1630s to the 1930s, the problem of leisure was that there was not much leisure, especially designated days of recreation. In this dissertation I describe reformers' responses and contributions to the recreational landscape, primarily in the northeastern United States. Puritan attitudes toward recreation have been much misunderstood. Puritans opposed Saints Days and Sunday recreations as part of their larger project to reform or "desacralize" the calendar. Because they preferred recreation that was secular and regular, however, they were the first to advocate for designated days of recreation. In the New World, Puritan attitudes toward recreation were reinforced by republican virtues through the War for Independence. In the nineteenth century, different groups responded differently to the crises of leisure time and space. Unitarians supported uplifting public initiatives such as Central Park, while Methodists created alternative destinations such as Asbury Park and Ocean Grove. This Victorian "resacralizing" of leisure was not the initiative of conservative Calvinists, but of Arminians and religious liberals. Evangelicals in the Calvinist tradition focused on advocating for the Saturday half-holiday as a means of preserving Sunday for rest and worship. Sabbatarianism adapted to the Progressive Era in response to entertainment entrepreneurs' exploitation of free time on Sunday. Saturday afternoons, however, were also filled with the very consumption and pleasure-seeking that Sabbatarians most abhorred. Thus, when Jewish Sabbatarians advocated for a Saturday full-holiday in the 1920s, Protestant Sabbatarians were unsupportive. They understood their advocacy for secular leisure was contributing to a new lifestyle and sensibility focused on fun, pleasure, and consumption. Sabbatarians in the Puritan tradition succeeded not only in banishing ritual festivities such as May games, but also in securing a weekly day of recreation: The weekend arrived first in 1930s England and America largely because of Sabbatarian advocacy. This success, however, was ambiguous; the singular "weekend" suggests an undifferentiated block of time that no longer distinguishes much between rest and recreation. In the end, Sabbatarians were neither as reactionary and unsuccessful as they are commonly depicted, nor as countercultural and successful as they aspired.