Is Sunday or Monday the Start of the Week? How a Missed Meeting Exposed a Bigger Cultural Shift

A simple question about the first day of the week caused me to miss a meeting on Monday. My colleague from a charity I work with asked on Sunday afternoon what day I was free next week. I replied Monday, meaning the 27th. She meant the 20th. For me, Sunday was the first day of the week. Therefore, next week is the week after. Hannah then told me that Monday is the first day of the week, so next week on a Sunday afternoon meant tomorrow onwards. If I had known, I could have said no. It was our anniversary. That moment, however, sent Hannah and I into a deeper reflection on calendars, culture, the quiet loss of rest in modern life, and Hannah feeling she had been lied to her entire life.

I grew up with a clear understanding of time. Jewish Sabbath is Saturday. The day of rest. School finished on a Friday and we rested on the Saturday. Traditionally Sunday starts the week, with Christians holding Sunday as both the first day and the eighth day. Our Gregorian calendar was introduced in October 1582, exactly four hundred years before I was born. It was shaped and applied across Catholic countries early on, with Great Britain and America accepting it in 1752, and places like Russia and Turkey accepting it in the twentieth century. Sunday was always the start. Monday was always the first working day.

The confusion only makes sense when you realise that two calendars now run side by side. The traditional, multi‑millennia biblical and liturgical week begins on Sunday. The modern business and school week begins on Monday. These two systems overlap and collide, creating misunderstandings like mine.

Time didn’t shift instantly. The industrial revolution reframed time around labour. Factories and offices needed standardised working weeks. Monday became the first working day and slowly replaced the older pattern. The change became official in 1988 when ISO‑8601 declared Monday as the first day of the week for business, government and digital systems. Everything from Outlook to payroll adopted it, making the digital age calendar the universal default. Culture naturally followed.

This transition is visible in our culture. Happy Days aired in 1974, before the calendar change. Its intro song demonstrates this, saying,

“Sunday, Monday, happy days. Tuesday, Wednesday, happy days. Thursday, Friday, happy days. Saturday, what a day, rockin’ all week for you.”

Friends aired in 1994, after the digital shift. There, Joey counted the days in a week differently. He says,

“All right, Monday, one‑day, Tuesday, two‑day, Wednesday, when? huh? what day? Thursday. The third day, okay?”

It is funny, yet you can see the cultural transition. Only twenty years divide them, making the shift cultural and generational. We are watching a civilisation change its understanding of time.

This is where Walter Brueggemann becomes important. His book Sabbath as Resistance argues that Sabbath is not only a Christian practice. It is a social rebellion. He describes a world shaped by restrictive consumerism, legislation and economic pressure. These forces create anxiety, entitlement, inequality and a culture where worth is measured by output. In a society defined by production and consumption, everyone is coerced to perform better, produce more and consume more. The result is a normalisation of abuse and a blindness to the system around us. This point stands true when considering the first day of the week.

I previously explored this at college and highlighted Brueggemann’s point. Sabbath, both as a Saturday and a Sunday, confronts this, says no to the institutions and people who demand endless work, and the lie that our value is earned.

The loss of Sunday as the first day of the week is not a small cultural shift. It is a symptom of a deeper problem. Our weekends have become extensions of the working week. Saturday is no longer a day of rest. Sunday is no longer a day of renewal, reflection, re‑energisation or personal and communal worship, whatever shape that takes, even if it is simply honouring yourself. It's no longer what it is or was embedded as. The rhythm of rest then work has been replaced by work then work. The calendar is only one part of this wider system.

This is why the question “Is Sunday or Monday the start of the week?” matters. It reveals the story we live by. It exposes the pressures shaping our time and how easily we accept systems that exhaust us. It also reminds us of a preexisting rhythm that begins with rest, ends with rest and restores one’s sense of presence.

When chatting to Hannah about it, I felt a little crazy, yet I am not alone in feeling the tension. Many people instinctively hold Sunday as the first day because it carries a memory of a healthier pattern. One that encourages us to breathe, rest and prepare for the week ahead rather than recovering from it.

The calendar changed in 1988. The culture changed soon after. The human need for rest has not changed at all.

I think keeping Sunday as the first day of the week remains the best option for us all.

What do you think? What's the first day of the week?