Why Rest On Thanksgiving If Not Every Sunday?

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Maybe you’ve seen the following image floating about social media lately?

I pledge not to shop on Thanksgiving

We agree. And we get it. We both have siblings who work in retail, and we understand the conflict that occasionally arises when choosing between providing for and celebrating with your family. And while we appreciate the push for a Thanksgiving Day fast from consumerism, it seems like we’re trying to avoid sleeping in the bed we’ve already made for ourselves.

Does your Sunday look any different from your Saturday? Or even Monday through Friday for that matter? God created the world in six days. Then, He rested. Whether or not you believe the Creation story was literally completed in a six-day timeframe, there’s profound spiritual significance in God settting apart a time to rest.

On the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing; he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation. — Genesis 2: 2-3

If the Creator of all life rested, why would we, made in His image and likeness, think we shouldn’t do the same?

On some level, we used to intuitively get this. Enough that it became engrained in our language. Let’s look up the definition of sabbatical.

Sabbatical Definition

Note that those definitions are largely secular. The etymology, however, comes from the word sabbath, obviously having religious connotations. It appears that once upon a time the culture borrowed the good ideas of Christians, rather than the Church acquiescing to the norms of the culture. For example, university professors go on sabbatical. They take time off, traditionally every seventh year, and go do something that is set apart from their usual work responsibilities — often oriented toward rest and renewal. Note this typically happens every seven years. Seems an obvious echo of the seven days of the Creation story in Genesis, doesn’t it?

We used to keep the Sabbath. We used to set it aside and say, “Here is a time when we will stop and honor God.” As Catholics, we honor him by attending Mass where we celebrate the Eucharist and consume the body and blood of Christ. Shouldn’t we honor the time before and after that most sacred moment by interrupting all other habits? How can we hallow the time around that event? And isn’t that what the Sabbath is all about — setting aside a time and place for holiness? Rather than Mass being an hour shoved in between two other things we are doing, we ought to take time before to prepare ourselves for what we we’re about to do, and then time after to rest in what we just did.

There’s a discipline of keeping a sabbath, isn’t there? Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s difficult to set aside time and place for rest and renewal. “The Disease of Being Busy” is an actual thing now, and we Christians are not exempt. How many of us attend the Saturday Vigil Mass in order to avoid some Sunday morning conflict rather than it being the first opportunity to receive the Eucharist? Are we transferring the Sunday obligation to Saturday in order to avoid setting Sunday apart?

When we’ve let the Sabbath go, how are we supposed to reclaim a holiday that is marginally religious such as Thanksgiving? What is our witness around the most important thing we do all week? If we can’t set aside even a few Sundays here and there, why are our knickers in such a knot about Thanksgiving?

Shouldn’t we set aside time to give thanks not just once a year, but once a week, too? Shouldn’t we make a sincere effort to boycott all those things that most readily turn our hearts away from God? What better time than Advent to renew our commitment to that as we prepare to renew our hearts to receive Jesus at Christmas.

Pledge to Rest

11 Comments

  1. Yes! I love this! I feel very strongly about this, especially with a husband in retail who has worked the majority of Sundays throughout our marriage. Our weeks are much more centered when we’ve been able to worship and rest as a family on Sundays. It’s so great to read this.

    Reply

    • Thanks for reading, Colleen, and passing along your kind words! Since Joel has been ordained, we’ve struggled a bit to find a balance between his commitments on the altar on and God’s commandment to honor the Sabbath. And I agree, when we are able to worship and rest as family, our weeks are more centered. Well stated!

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  2. I read another blog post years ago advocating for families to pick one day – any day of the week- and designate it “Sunday” a day of rest. They didn’t have kids or M-F jobs so it worked for them. It sounds nice but completely unrealistic. :)

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  5. It is a very doable thing though it does take a LOT of discipline. I managed to do it almost every Sunday when I was a single mother in grad school for three years. It was a matter of “shopping ahead” or “doing without” on a Sunday. It was my one day to completely be with my kids. Another grad student did his holy day as “sun down on Saturday to sun down on Sunday” and then he began studying again for classes. We both aced all of our tests/papers, etc that were due on Monday when we are completing this Sabbath discipline. As for the life teen thing I would count it as still keeping the Sabbath holy-you are doing a religious thing with your children-the focus is still on God. We now have our adoration hour at 5pm on Sundays which my husband and I alternate going to. We also try to bring our children (with religous books, coloring books, rosaries, etc) to our holy hour every so often. Many times we have a teen with us that slips upstairs for evening mass if they couldn’t make the earlier mass time due to sports or work or illness. We actually used to do it once a month, but slacked this year so it’s one of my goals for the new year.

    Thank you for this encouragement to try to make this a priority once again!!! For “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly” and God will bless us by the sacrifices that only He knows we make!!

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