AND ANOTHER THING
If we banish Sunday for good, we are sure to miss it
PAUL JOHNSON
When, in the 1920s, the British athlete Eric Liddell refused, on principle, to run an Olympic race on a Sunday, and so sacrificed a likely gold medal, people thought his ges- ture admirable, even heroic, albeit unusual even then. Today, such self-abnegation would be regarded as incomprehensible, if not downright insane. The reaction would be hostile and he would be marked down as a 'loner', at best a 'fundamentalist', with all its unpleasant connotation of fanaticism, bigotry and intolerance; at worst actively dangerous, the kind of person who might suddenly burst into an infants' classroom flourishing a machine-gun.
At the end of the most squalid Olympics since the Berlin Games of 1936, it is plain that principle no longer enters the Olympic mentality at any point. The games are not about sportsmanship or internationalism or ideals of any kind, but about success at all costs, subject to the sole proviso of staying within rules interpreted as narrowly and legalistically as possible. Liddell made a noble response to an event which was still a noble concept. It is no longer so, and no fun either (the two usually go together).
What really interests me about Liddell's refusal is that he made Sunday the issue. It set me thinking about Sunday and its grad- ual loss of potency during my lifetime. I was born sufficiently long ago to have expe- rienced, as a child, the full rigours of an English Sunday, albeit in its less severe papist, as opposed to Calvinist, version. Sunday was a day marked off from the rest in countless subtle ways. You sensed it the second you awoke. You had been to con- fession the evening before and the aim was to get through Sunday, at least, without committing any sin, however venial. You spoke quietly, even grammatically. You did not use slang. You did not run or perform violent actions of any kind. A.C. Benson, the observant son of an Archbishop of Can- terbury, once noted: 'Religious people do essentially the same things as everyone else. But they do them more slowly.' Sun- day was a slow-motion day, and a muffled one. Things happened later because there were special rituals, which took time. Putting on a starched collar was a difficult and protracted operation. There was the solemn distribution of collection money, graded according to age. Shoes were pol- ished and inspected (should have been pol- ished the day before). Then we set out in a crocodile, my mother and father leading, arm in arm. Everyone went to church or, if they did not, their failure was disapproving- ly noted. 'Atheist' was a term of abuse then, alongside 'Communist', agitator', 'divorcée' etc.
For a superbly evocative description of an Oxford Sunday morning in the early 1920s, with its atmosphere of compulsive sectarianism, see Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Not to go to church would have seemed to me then an unthink- able omission, inviting instant retribution. Indeed it never happened, in the whole of my childhood. The high, sung mass appeared interminable, though it cannot have lasted much over an hour. Our priest had only two basic sermons. One began, 'Consider the infinite, ineffable, indescrib- able, inexhaustible goodness of God.' That was the short one, preached when he was in a good mood. Then there was the cross, scowling, long one, beginning with the angry words hissed out in a kind of con- temptuous snarl, 'Martin Luther!' This was the one my father, being combative, pre- ferred; my mother, more eirenic, liked the Goodness-of-God theme. My mind wan- dered long before the conclusion of either, soaring into the vast sky-blue-painted domes above, studying the dust-motes in the shafts of light from the clerestory win- dows. Breakfast, being after church, was later than on weekdays. It was much grander, too, and served in a more ceremo- nious fashion, and often marked by one of my father's pronouncements: 'There is something flashy about Gainsborough.' Or, 'It is time Baldwin was put out to grass.' Or, 'Byzantium should never be underesti- mated.'
My mother insisted that 'servile work' be banned on Sundays. But then she always worked very hard herself, harder if any- thing than on weekdays. It was never clear It protects you from knives, bullets and horseplay.' to me what 'work' meant. The rabbinical rules governing the Sabbath were unpopu- lar in Catholic households. So was Puri- tanism, regarded as heresy. Washing, iron- ing and sewing were definitely not allowed, but gardening was permitted. I was not sup- posed to play with my lead soldiers, but I was positively encouraged to draw and paint. A walk was compulsory, but was made dull by slowing the pace to a liturgi- cal saunter and by the banning of side- activities except 'nature study'. Card games were strictly forbidden, chess was not, and Sunday evenings were the only time when we played charades. All these rules, and there were many others, were traditional, inflexible and without much doctrinal ratio- nale, so far as I could see. But it never occurred to me to challenge any of them.
If we now destroy Sunday, as some peo- ple seem determined to do, we raise a lot of questions which are perhaps best left unasked, because there are no good answers. Why have names for days anyway, or seven to a week? Why have months? Why do we have to stick to our existing chronological divisions, which are founded in paganist primitive agriculture and ancient notions of astronomy? The answer, I think, is that most of us, most of the time, cherish rules, divisions, differentiations, rit- uals, routines and customs (and, let us admit it, classes). Observances help to fill what Dr Johnson called 'the great vacancies of life', and defying them at whim adds zest to the necessary servitude of routine. My old friend Ken Tynan, who had a some- times enviable gift for prolonging child- hood into middle age, told me he saw each day of the week as a different colour. To his dying day he relished not going to church on Sunday, just as he continued to award himself pocket money on Saturday mornings and hugely enjoyed spending it. I still see Sunday as in some overriding if indefinable way God's day, in which I hesi- tate longer than usual over acts of self- indulgence, let alone wickedness, and vaguely feel that I should be doing some- thing positively uplifting. I would not say that I avoid servile work but I do have a i superstition, while writing, that God is looking over my shoulder more than usual. 'Then why', asks the practical Marigold, 'do you always write your Spectator piece immediately after breakfast on Sunday morning?' To which I reply, 'There does not have to be a reason. It is the rule.'
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