Waiting for the Weekend is a book published in 1991 by Canadian architect, professor and writer Witold Rybczynski.
In Waiting for the Weekend, Rybczynski recounts the evolution of the seven-day week, which came into being with the Babylonian calendar, and the later, more modern, development of the two-day weekend. In so doing, he tells the history of leisure and time off; starting first with "taboo" days, market days, public festivals and holy days and how, with the coming of the Industrial Revolution the practice of "keeping Saint Monday", that is, staying home from work, evolved into the modern weekend.
Famous quotes containing the words waiting for the, waiting for, waiting and/or weekend:
“Now I know that much of parenthood is watching and waiting for the chick to fall into harm’s way, watching and waiting for the cats and the cold nights. The joyous enterprise has an undercurrent of terror.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
squandering your unquoted mirth,
which keeps the ground, and never soars,
while jake retorts, and reuben roars;
tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
goes like bullet to its mark;
while the solid curse and jeer
never balk the waiting ear.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Weekend planning is a prime time to apply the Deathbed Priority Test: On your deathbed, will you wish you’d spent more prime weekend hours grocery shopping or walking in the woods with your kids?”
—Louise Lague (20th century)