The start of a new year and a new calendar brings to mind the confusion foisted upon us by different ways of numbering the days of the week.

For me, the first day of the week is Sunday, so it’s a source of irritation to find calendars increasingly starting the week on a Monday.

How often, with a quick glance at a modernised calendar, do I mismatch the date and the day of the week? Often enough. Sunday, I reckon, should be the date on the far left, Saturday on the extreme right. The one in the middle is Wednesday. Not Thursday, as these wretched new calendars say. (By the way, Wednesday is Mittwoch in German – mid-week.)

Is demoting Sunday, I wondered, yet another victory for secularisation – the day revered by Christians for two millennia? Or is it simply that the 20th Century development of what became known as the ‘weekend’ inevitably led to the idea that the week begins on a Monday?

Each year I put together a picture calendar for family, selecting photos mainly of grandchildren whooping about. The software I use serves up Sunday as the default first weekday, but offers the choice as to which day to start. I stick with Sunday, which puts my calendar out of sync with others in the household (including the now-traditional Leunig calendar).

These days, most of us consult the calendars on our computers or phones, which adds to the confusion if you’re a Sunday-firster like me. The iPhone, for example, starts the week on Monday. Moreover, in multi-month presentations there are no days at the top so you just have to know that the far left date is Monday.

Why is this so? I discovered that Apple makes Monday the first weekday because this is, in their words, ‘Australia default’. What? Who says it is the Australian default? Our beloved government, of course.

Sunday has been the first day of the week for some 6,000 years. The Babylonians’ seven-day week began on the Sun’s day. The ancient Greeks’ and the Romans’ first day was the day of the sun. The first day in the Jewish week is Yom Rishon – which literally means first day (while Yom Shabbat means seventh day, Saturday).

Christians well know the beginning of chapter 20 in St John’s gospel: ‘On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away.’ That day was Sunday.

So by what authority has the Australian government overturned 6,000 years of history and usage to change the first day to Monday?

The answer is Zurich. Switzerland’s largest city is headquarters of ISO, the International Organisation for Standardisation. In its standard ISO8601 this body established Monday as the first day of the week. That was in 1988.

Why? Let’s go back to the French Revolutionary Calendar of 1793, which as part of its anti-religious purge threw out Sunday and indeed created a 10-day week. That experiment lasted only a dozen years, and the traditional months and weekdays were restored.

But subsequently, as everyone who has learnt French knows, lundi or Monday became the designated first day. This usage spread to some other European countries. Eventually ISO decided, as part of a package of calendar designations, that Monday should be the world’s standard first day of the week.

ISO is not a government body, yet governments follow its recommendations closely.
Australia didn’t have to follow this guidance. In fact, only half the world has done so. All of North and South America including the United States and Canada have kept Sunday as the first day.

Were Australians asked whether they wanted to change the first day of the week? I don’t recall so.

And so six millennia of history are overturned at the behest of the standards engineers – who in fact have not ended up achieving a world standard.

A personal happy ending to this story is that I found I could change the first day of the week to Sunday on my phone, via the settings. So if you are a Monday-firster, please be understanding if I arrive for our appointments a day late.