While the seven day time period ("week") has been around for a long time in 'the West', it didn't really take hold as a form of scheduling until the early-1800s in the US:
> With meticulous archival research that draws on a wide array of sources—including newspapers, restaurant menus, theater schedules, marriage records, school curricula, folklore, housekeeping guides, courtroom testimony, and diaries—David Henkin reveals how our current devotion to weekly rhythms emerged in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. Reconstructing how weekly patterns insinuated themselves into the social practices and mental habits of Americans, Henkin argues that the week is more than just a regimen of rest days or breaks from work, but a dominant organizational principle of modern society. Ultimately, the seven-day week shapes our understanding and experience of time.
Yes, Christianity has been around for two thousand years, and the Lord's Day was celebrated, but in the pre-Reformation days there were many feast days for saints, both on a national and international scale, but also more local/regional celebrations, so folks had Holy Days (holidays) sprinkled between Sundays as well. People would often tell time not in day-of-week or day-month, but with regards to (liturgical) seasons and feast days, e.g.:
Also, pre-Industrial Revolution, most work was fairly agricultural, which was much more 'continuous' in that you couldn't really 'shut down' a farm: livestock and such had to be taken care of.
It was the combination of a more Protestant and industrial US that allowed for there to be mostly one 'special' day and the ability to not have to 'go to work' (in a factory) that really solidified the week as a time period.
In the rural Europe, attendance at church on Sundays was more or less socially or even legally obligatory even among the agrarian majority, but distances from farms to parish churches were sometimes so vast that the journey to church and back could take all day (in the Nordic countries it could even take two). Therefore, the idea of Sunday as a “rest day” might not have been so well-entrenched, but it was already a “no work” day for many farmers.
> With meticulous archival research that draws on a wide array of sources—including newspapers, restaurant menus, theater schedules, marriage records, school curricula, folklore, housekeeping guides, courtroom testimony, and diaries—David Henkin reveals how our current devotion to weekly rhythms emerged in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. Reconstructing how weekly patterns insinuated themselves into the social practices and mental habits of Americans, Henkin argues that the week is more than just a regimen of rest days or breaks from work, but a dominant organizational principle of modern society. Ultimately, the seven-day week shapes our understanding and experience of time.
* https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300271157/the-week/
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57615569-the-week
Yes, Christianity has been around for two thousand years, and the Lord's Day was celebrated, but in the pre-Reformation days there were many feast days for saints, both on a national and international scale, but also more local/regional celebrations, so folks had Holy Days (holidays) sprinkled between Sundays as well. People would often tell time not in day-of-week or day-month, but with regards to (liturgical) seasons and feast days, e.g.:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Crispin%27s_Day_Speech
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Crispin%27s_Day
Also, pre-Industrial Revolution, most work was fairly agricultural, which was much more 'continuous' in that you couldn't really 'shut down' a farm: livestock and such had to be taken care of.
It was the combination of a more Protestant and industrial US that allowed for there to be mostly one 'special' day and the ability to not have to 'go to work' (in a factory) that really solidified the week as a time period.