If someone told todays World there would be no sports to be played on Sunday's I feel there would be a riot. Back in the seventeenth century in the time when Puritains were one of the largest religions, they were against the fact of having recreational activities mainly sport on Sunday's. This quickly was aprehended by the declearation of the book of sports in 1618 by King James I where it stated that sports and other activities were allowed to be played on Sundays.
In our generation Sunday is one of the biggest days for sporting events to take place. Take for instance the National Football League. Majority of their games are played on Sundays. To most football fans Sundays are dedicated to sitting down in front of their television sets and watching games all day. As well as having most of their regular season play games on Sunday the biggest game in football is played on Sunday...The Superbowl. To some people the Superbowl is considered a National holiday. In some crazy cases people get days off work on modays so they can recover from the exciting game that was watched on that Sunday night. We could also look at this issue economically. Superbowl Sunday brings in so much revenue not only for the game but for companies that have commercials during the game, the city hosting the game, and for television companies. So just imagine...if it wasn't for King James I, who knows where sports on Sunday would fall. I'm sure eventually there would be a change but I feel that without sports on Sundays, it would just be a lazy day of nothing.
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Of course, that "lazy day of nothing" to which you referred was what the Puritans referred to as the Sabbath. There are some groups today that still keep the sabbath by refusing to participate in sport. Did you ever see "Chariots of Fire?" It won an academy award a number of years ago. It was the story of two runners--one of whom was a devout Christian (Eric Liddell) who refused to run on Sunday since he wanted to keep the Sabbath. As a result, he did not run in one of his events during the 1924 Olympics. Of course, that was 85 years ago. And I agree, it is difficult to envision Sundays without sports, especially as you noted--the Super Bowl!
ReplyDeleteWell another interesting thing to think about is the number of sports that are not played on Sundays and the areas that chose not to play on Sundays. What I am referring to is my area that I live in at least. In my area and many towns around my area will not play high school or league sports on Sundays. Now this may be because people believe that they can't gather a game with churches worshipping or maybe because we just plain believe that Sunday is a day of resting and worshipping except for the upper class sports heroes. Do we actually hold sports heroes to be above the rest of people so that it is acceptable for them to play on Sundays? Maybe we even think that they are so great that they must play on Sundays? I don't know the answer to this because it is all about opinion, but I do believe that we hold athletes in to high of status.
ReplyDeleteI understand the religious point of views of Sunday but I must say from September to January Sunday is my favorite day of the year and it is because of the NFL. Every Sunday I am sad to say but I normally watch 7-11 hours of football and it is just a great day to relax and refoucus for the next week.
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