In 1926, Henry Ford gave his employees both Saturdays and Sundays off – and the two-day chunk of time to party, pray or simply do nothing was born. Now it’s changed beyond recognition
Has it? I'm writing this on a Bank Holday weekend that seems remarkably unchanged to me. Laundry to do (weather permitting), and blogging, and catching up on reading and tv watching.
A world without weekends feels impossible. A world without Saturday Night Fever, without Manic Monday. We may no longer go to church on Sunday, but we still worship the weekend. “The weekend looms large because it represents the triumph of collective time over market time,” says Brad Beaven, professor of social and cultural history at the University of Portsmouth. “It is not just about rest, but about reclaiming autonomy from the industrial clock.”
Amen!
Everyone knows what a weekend means. The snap of a laptop cover at 4.58pm on a Friday. The clink of the first pint glass and the smell of chips on the way home. The slow-motion pace of a weekend pavement, the gear change from hustle to meander.
But it can be hard to pin down, these days, where a weekend begins and ends. Laundry gets done on a work-from-home Friday, but emails are answered on Sunday.
Only in the summer. Coming into Autumn, I can't see much laundry getting done unless you don't hang out your washing and I like to work in the office Friday because it's quiet an you can get more done.
It raises the question: what even is “the weekend” in 2026?
It's Saturday and Sunday, same as it's always been. If you lack the willpower not to look at work emails when you're off the clock (assuming you aren't paid to do so) then I can assure you, you're a mug!
These days, the upstairs-downstairs division is between the hybrid workers and those whose work can never be done remotely. An age-old division between shift work and the relative flexibility of white-collar jobs has deepened.
In 2024, Transport for London ran a three-month trial scrapping peak fares on Fridays explicitly in order to lure commuters back into central London. It failed, Fridays remaining quiet, despite the discount.
Good! Long may it remain so!
The Green party supports a “move towards” a four-day week, but other politicians are wary.
The Greens are lunatics, and no-one is listening to what they want.
Perhaps we shouldn’t fret so much.
This is the 'Guardian', and fretting seems to be its USP...
The Soviets discovered that a day off is not much use unless other people are off, too; Ford understood that workers needed time in which to become themselves again, even if he hoped they would spend it buying cars. At 100, the two-day weekend is fraying at the edges, leaking into Friday and nibbled away by Sunday night emails. The weekend will keep changing, because work keeps changing. But it will still always be the best thing work ever invented.
Amen, and long may it continue.
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