Not to sound hopelessly nostalgic, but Sundays used to be better, didn’t they? Maybe my vision is distorted by buffed-up, rose-tinted specs – I vaguely recall being woefully bored at the time – but in hindsight, the Sundays of my youth resemble a blissful, stress-free utopia. Once a week, my family would go to church; take a bracing yomp in green, open space; eat a roast dinner; and spend the afternoon reading or playing games before pivoting to an evening watching some of the most gentle programmes in the history of TV scheduling (Songs of Praise segueing seamlessly into Antiques Roadshow and Last of the Summer Wine). It was a day of peace, a day of rest, a day of, whether intentionally or not, Sabbath.
Part of this weekly slowdown was enshrined in law. Up until the mid-1990s, buying and selling on Sunday was still illegal under the Shops Act 1950. Almost nothing was open; to all intents and purposes, consumerism ground to a halt. “For better or worse, Sunday was different and had an identity of its own,” says Daniel Gray, author of Sunday Best, a new book exploring the UK’s Sunday traditions.
