IN PRAISE OF SUNDAYS

Nathalie Marquez Courtney on why it’s time we reclaim this sacred day of rest

Most of us can probably remember what Sundays used to feel like. Shops closed. Roads quiet. Idle time. While mass attendance continues to fall and one in ten people in Ireland say they have no religion, our Sundays have become less and less sacred. And I don’t mean as days of donning starched collars, doilied socks and dutifully trying to sit through an hourlong sermon. I mean as a day to rest and reset. Precious, protected.

Sunday is no longer a day to slow down; rather it has become a day of “do all those boring jobs that need doing”. Many of us use it as an opportunity to prep for the week, squeeze in some work to get ahead, do a shop. Almost all stores now open on Sundays. Less and less, we’re seeing Sunday as a respite from the week, an opportunity to metaphorically batten down the hatches and just be. It has become just like every other day, which is to say busy, jam-packed, hectic.

It may have its roots in various spiritual practices, but setting aside a day for rest is not about religion. Eroding that pause, that exhale that Sunday used to offer creates a feeling of endless go, each week running into the other in a blur of busyness, as the unread papers pile up.

SCREEN-FREE SUNDAYS

It probably won’t come as any surprise that one of the biggest culprits when it comes to robbing us of Sunday rest is technology. Now, I love technology; I write about it regularly, have a smart home full of tech, and am as partial as anyone to a good scroll on Instagram. But it’s hard to escape the feeling that it’s taking over not just our lives, but our brains too. For the past few decades, we have been unwitting participants in a social experiment – we’ve been given more and more access to digital tools and products explicitly designed to be “sticky” and addictive. Which is a problem when what we really need is to switch off; to perhaps become a little less trigger-happy with refreshing our feeds and a bit more focused on refreshing ourselves.

According to data collected by digitaldetox.org, the average employee checks 40 websites a day, switches activities 37 times an hour, and changes tasks every two minutes. Wouldn’t it be nice to take a little break from that, even just once a week?

Barbara Putman Cramer is a creative strategist based in the Netherlands and co-creator of Screen Free Sundays, a campaign

to build a “global screen-free movement” and create a new international holiday by committing to as many screen-free Sundays as possible (screenfreesunday.global). “Our devices are so distracting, and our brains were never built to be able to naturally step away,” she says. The campaign is fun and inviting, light on hard and fast rules, encouraging people to go screenfree in whatever way works for them, and shares lots of datadriven insights on the effects of screen use. “Like so many of us, a lot of my work is on screens, so I’m always trying to find little ways of doing without,” says Barbara. “Even something simple, like going for a walk and leaving the phone at home.”

As well as reducing those jittery feelings of anxiety that being constantly tethered create, going screen-free also gives you back our most precious commodity: time. “Not knowing the time made the day feel so expansive,” said one Screen Free Sunday participant. “Time had never felt so long! You become so much more aware of what you’re doing,” said another. What becomes clear is that all those micro-interactions with our screens really add up. “One screen-free Sunday, we fixed everything around the house,” Barbara laughs.

“This isn’t about finding habit hacks – turning your phone black and white, or moving apps around your home screen,” she continues. “It’s more about stepping away, taking a break and asking yourself, ‘How do you really want to spend your time?’” Screens distract us, and prevent us from deeper inward reflection. “It’s worrying that we can’t sit at a bus stop and have five minutes with our own thoughts.”

FAMILY FIRST: DISCONNECT TO RE-CONNECT

According to Kim John Payne, bestselling author and internationally-renowned family counsellor, kids are especially missing out when downtime is replaced with screentime. “There was an exhale on Sundays,” he says. “Now, most kids don’t get that these days, unless we consciously do it.”

Kim is the author of several books, including the international bestseller Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids (Random House, €21), which has kicked off a global movement aimed at doing less, having less and establishing family rhythms and rituals centred on connection.

“Is there a moment – not a day, but a moment – when you can’t be reached?” Payne asked this in his book when it was first published almost ten years ago, and it’s a question that has become even more pertinent. “As parents, we’ve got this gut instinct that something is not right,” he says. “A huge part of that is about not being available. Are there times when you are truly present for your kids and not available for people outside the family? Boy, that has become a major issue over the last ten years.”

He encourages parents to find what he calls “moments of sabbath” throughout the week, to try and slowly inject that quiet day feeling into the flow of family life: “One of the best small, doable changes you can make is to cast about in your week as a mum or a dad and think, ‘Where’s our little moment of sabbath?’”

“This has been a foothold of change for many, many parents who are not necessarily outwardly religious,” he continues. “They might hold spiritual values or new values, but what they’ve started doing is introducing these little moments – it might just be sitting together on the sofa after supper. Or Sunday morning pancakes. Or it might be turning off all technology to have your evening meal,” he says, adding with a laugh, “And I don’t mean just hitting Airplane Mode, but the off off button – the really, truly madly, deeply off button.”

What surprises many families is how much of a game-changer creating these little moments can be. “What’s really interesting is that when a parent does that, it doesn’t just feel good, it feels right,” he says. “There’s a certain recognition, a deep feeling of rightness.”

Kim describes himself as “not anti-screen, but passionately pro-human relationships and family connections”. It’s deep connections that help build up children’s self-esteem and happiness, and, he says, they are being gradually eroded by devices – what he has dubbed “weapons of mass distraction”.

Once families have started introducing these small, doable, device-free moments, they’ll often begin looking for ways to expand them out. “It needs to be gradual – if you start by saying ‘no tech on Sundays’, any parent is going to tell you that’s impossible,” he says. “But if you have no tech for 25 minutes over a meal, you quickly realise it is possible and that, actually, you’re all still breathing. Then you can build out. What starts happening is that it starts growing very organically, very naturally, without feeling one is forcing it.” For example, you could go from having phones off at supper to a screen-free Saturday games night or expand a tech-free Sunday breakfast into a longer morning hike.

Boundary-setting and moderation around devices will help prepare our kids for a future when we won’t be there to monitor their phone use, and will help teach them the value of rest and true self-care. Of course, as many parents know, this can be hard to do. Omnipresent devices have led to always-on expectations in the workplace, but Kim is optimistic that, as more parents see the effect their own device use has on family dynamics (“everyone is distracted when one member of the family is distracted”), they’ll start finding ways to step away. “My hope is that we can be ahead of the curve as parents, particularly parents aware of the importance of simplicity and balance, and that we don’t have to wait for our employer to do that,” he says. “Why wait until everyone catches up? Let’s make decisions to just simply not be available. Just turn it off. Bathe your children, brush their teeth, read them a story, you know? There are very, very few things that can’t wait an hour.”