Traditionally a day of rest and worship, Sunday has also become a day to watch sports or engage in other secular forms of recreation.
A new book, Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl, by Craig Harline, examines the evolution of the first day across time and culture.
The purpose of Sunday became the longest of all 19th-century national debates — preceding and outlasting even more heated discussions over temperance and slavery, says Harline, a history professor at Brigham Young University.
The author uses a day-in-the-life approach to explore the day of rest in medieval England, turn-of-the-20th-century Paris and the United States in the 1950s.
Harline speaks with Liane Hansen about the 3,000-year evolution of Sunday.
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