Fridays: A Gift Of Western Civilization

We've all heard it before, the old cliche' "Thank God It's Friday." When I was young, being raised as a nominal Catholic, I used to think it was because grown-ups liked halibut night (note to non-Catholics: Catholics/Christians were not supposed to eat meat on Fridays back in the day; some still follow that idea, but only during Lent, which is why you will see fish meals pop up on fast-food menus around March of every year--CG.)

But now that I am older, and have to actually work for a living, I understand the true meaning of Friday: it is the last day in a week of drudgery and toil, the final day that you have to deal with bosses, customers, purchase orders, sales reports, intra-office memos, faulty equipment, and lazy coworkers-- in 8 short hours, we will get our reward, 2 full days of blissful repose and serene contemplation of the good things in life.

But to what do we owe the joy of the weekend? Well, first and foremost, we owe Friday to the oft-maligned practice of remembering the Sabbath and keeping it Holy-- those pesky Judeo-Christian values that are so out of vogue today. The Sabbath should be (and is, for Jews and smaller Christian sects) Saturday, the final day of the week, the day even God had to use to fire up the grill and forget about the hard week's work He had just put in, what with Creation and all that. Takes a lot out of a deity, especially when there's only One of him doing all the work. Sure, it makes the org. chart more readable, but when you mess around and make something like the duck-billed platypus, there's no one else to blame.

So, the Jewish religion was really the first organization to mandate a 6-day work week, and "T.G.I.F." was meant literally in Jewish communities.