The weekend is 100 years old
The weekend is 100 years old
周末一百岁了
The introduction of the weekend gave rise to the minibreak – alongside plenty of other leisure activities. 周末的引入催生了“短途度假”，同时也带来了许多其他的休闲活动。
The weekend is 100 years old – but have ‘skiveday Fridays’ and hybrid working ruined it for everyone? 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. 周末已经一百岁了——但“周五摸鱼”和混合办公模式是否毁了它？1926年，亨利·福特（Henry Ford）让他的员工周六和周日双休，这块可以用来聚会、祈祷或单纯发呆的两天时间由此诞生。如今，它已经发生了翻天覆地的变化。
For 11 years, from 1929 to 1940, the Soviet Union did not have weekends. Instead, to increase productivity citizens were allocated a day off in every seven at random. With 80% of the population at work on any given day, factories never had to power down. 从1929年到1940年的11年间，苏联没有周末。相反，为了提高生产力，公民每七天会被随机分配一天休息。由于每天都有80%的人口在工作，工厂永远不必停工。
A letter from a disgruntled worker to Pravda newspaper, published soon after the implementation of this new working calendar, outlined the problems: “What is there for us to do at home if our wives are in the factory, our children at school, and nobody can visit us?” the letter-writer asked. “It is no holiday if you have to have it alone.” Parents found themselves at home while their children were at school, or with kids unsupervised while they were on shift. With no shared day off, extended family gatherings became impossible. The workforce became demoralised and listless, the projected spike in productivity never materialised, and the policy was first modified, then abandoned altogether. 在这一新工作日历实施后不久，《真理报》刊登了一封不满工人的来信，指出了其中的问题：“如果妻子在工厂，孩子在学校，没人能来拜访我们，我们在家能做什么呢？”写信人问道，“如果必须独自度过，那就不叫假期。”父母们发现自己在家时孩子在学校，或者当他们轮班时孩子无人看管。由于没有共同的休息日，大家庭聚会变得不可能。劳动力变得士气低落、无精打采，预期的生产力激增从未实现，该政策先是被修改，随后被彻底废弃。
Eleven years, though. Is that not absolutely wild? 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.” 不过，整整十一年。这难道不疯狂吗？一个没有周末的世界感觉是不可能的。一个没有《周末夜狂热》、没有“疯狂周一”的世界。我们或许不再在周日去教堂，但我们依然崇拜周末。朴茨茅斯大学社会与文化历史教授布拉德·比文（Brad Beaven）说：“周末之所以重要，是因为它代表了集体时间对市场时间的胜利。这不仅仅是为了休息，更是为了从工业时钟的束缚中夺回自主权。”
Saturday and Sunday, sacred to the dignity and humanity of working people, are laden with mythology and ceremony. From Cilla Black to Gary Lineker, the main characters of our weekends become giants of the culture. We romanticise the weekend, even the prosaic bits – the distant roar of a lawnmower, the rattle of classified football results on the radio. 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. 周六和周日，对于劳动人民的尊严和人性而言是神圣的，它们充满了神话色彩和仪式感。从西拉·布莱克（Cilla Black）到加里·莱因克尔（Gary Lineker），我们周末的主角成为了文化巨匠。我们浪漫化周末，甚至包括那些平淡无奇的片段——远处割草机的轰鸣声，收音机里传来的足球赛果播报。每个人都知道周末意味着什么：周五下午4点58分合上笔记本电脑的清脆声；第一杯啤酒杯的碰撞声，以及回家路上炸薯条的香味；周末人行道上慢动作般的节奏，从忙碌到悠闲的转换。
The rituals have changed with the times, of course, and people-watching at brunch on Saturday is now as much of a tradition as cooking a roast at home on Sunday. A weekend changes shape as you move through life stages, but in each iteration it remains a shared experience between you and your peers. 仪式感当然会随时代而改变，周六早午餐时观察路人，现在已和周日在家里做烤肉一样成为了一种传统。周末的形态会随着你人生阶段的改变而改变，但在每一次迭代中，它始终是你与同伴之间共享的体验。
“The weekend that I had when I was 20 was very different from the weekend that I have now, at 40 and with kids,” laughs Pedro Gomes, professor of economics at Birkbeck, University of London and author of the book Friday is the New Saturday. “When you are young, you are bonding with your friends, and then when you get older, you might be with your family. Eventually, you might be with grandchildren. We move through different manifestations of the weekend, in our lifetimes.” “我20岁时的周末和我现在40岁、有了孩子后的周末非常不同，”伦敦大学伯贝克学院经济学教授、《周五是新的周六》（Friday is the New Saturday）一书的作者佩德罗·戈麦斯（Pedro Gomes）笑着说，“当你年轻时，你与朋友建立联系；当你变老后，你可能与家人在一起；最终，你可能会与孙辈在一起。在我们的一生中，我们经历着周末的不同表现形式。”
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. A shopping splurge is as likely to be a cheer-up treat on your phone after a tough Wednesday as a Saturday outing. The traditional Saturday 3pm football kick-off has been stretched across the television schedules all the way to Monday evening. The four-day week – first predicted by Richard Nixon, of all people, in 1956 – has become a reality in the Netherlands, with people working an average of 32.1 hours. Friday is forging ahead with a quiet secession from the working week without anyone signing off the paperwork. It raises the question: what even is “the weekend” in 2026? 但如今，很难界定周末从何时开始、何时结束。居家办公的周五会洗衣服，而周日却在回复邮件。疯狂购物既可能是周三辛苦工作后在手机上买点东西犒劳自己，也可能是周六的出门逛街。传统的周六下午3点足球开球时间，已经被拉长到整个电视节目表，一直持续到周一晚上。四天工作制——最初竟是由理查德·尼克松（Richard Nixon）在1956年预测的——在荷兰已成为现实，人们平均每周工作32.1小时。周五正在悄然脱离工作周，无需任何人签署文件。这引发了一个问题：2026年的“周末”到底是什么？
Remarkably, the concept of the weekend as we know it is only 100 years old. In 1926, Henry Ford changed the shape of the week, announcing that the workers at his factories would now do five eight-hour days instead of six, with no cut in pay. Ford did not invent the weekend – the idea had been bubbling under for a century, in campaigns by trade unions, religious groups and progressive employers – but by putting his considerable industrial weight behind it, the two-day chunk of freedom was born. 值得注意的是，我们所知的周末概念只有100年的历史。1926年，亨利·福特改变了工作周的形态，宣布他的工厂工人现在每周工作五天，每天八小时，而不是六天，且工资不减。福特并没有发明周末——这个想法在工会、宗教团体和进步雇主的运动中已经酝酿了一个世纪——但通过他巨大的工业影响力，这两天的自由时间诞生了。
“It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege,” Ford wrote in his company’s Ford News in October 1926. Ford’s innovation was in part a response to his earlier invention: the assembly line, which had increased productivity but exhausted workers, with absenteeism up to 10% in factories; in his article he did not disguise that there was self-interest involved. “People who have more leisure require more transportation in vehicles,” he continued. The new fashion for day trips was an effective marketing device to sell cars. Meanwhile, his factories maintained a steady level of productivity despite the reduced hours. In 1938, faced with rising unemployment levels in the Great Depression, the five-day week was officially adopted across the US. “现在是时候摒弃那种认为工人的休闲要么是浪费时间，要么是阶级特权的观念了，”福特在1926年10月的公司刊物《福特新闻》（Ford News）中写道。福特的创新在一定程度上是对他早期发明——流水线——的回应。流水线提高了生产力，但也让工人精疲力竭，工厂缺勤率高达10%；他在文章中毫不掩饰其中包含的私利。“拥有更多闲暇时间的人需要更多的交通工具，”他继续说道。这种新的短途旅行风尚是销售汽车的有效营销手段。与此同时，尽管工作时间减少，他的工厂仍保持了稳定的生产水平。1938年，面对大萧条时期不断上升的失业率，五天工作制在美国正式被采纳。
On this side of the Atlantic, Boots the Chemist was the pioneer. In 1933, the company opened a new factory in Nottingham, which proved so efficient that there was soon a surplus of stock. Reluctant to lay his staff off… 在大西洋的这一侧，博姿药房（Boots the Chemist）是先驱。1933年，该公司在诺丁汉开设了一家新工厂，效率极高，很快就出现了库存过剩。由于不愿裁员……