The Dark Origins of Saturday: From Saturn’s Blessings to Sacrifices

The idea of a seven-day week originated in Babylon, based on the seven known planets: the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. (Britannica, 2024) (1).

The Romans later cribbed the system and chose their God, Saturn, to represent Saturday. Saturn was traditionally depicted as a Gandoph-looking old man with a long white beard. He watched over agriculture and brought strength, fertility, wealth, and abundance. 

According to the University of Warwick’s 2017 feature, Saturn also had a darker side (2). The post notes that the Roman philosopher Livy refers to human sacrifice during the festival of Saturnalia.

Interestingly, many historians believe that the festival marked the origins of modern-day Christmas. So, if you work Saturdays, know things could be way worse. 

The Science of Time and Boredom

A 2020 study published in Acta Psychologica Journal found that time passes more slowly when test subjects are waiting or bored (3). Bored people are worse at estimating the passage of time, and taking note of time more often skews their perception.

On the other hand, people who were engaged and interested in what they were doing felt that the time spent on a task was shorter than it was. In other words, boredom makes people more aware of themselves and their discomfort.

Another interesting study, published 2021 in the Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Journal, linked our body’s natural feel-good chemical dopamine to time perception (4). Dopamine significantly influences how we experience time, speeding up our perception.

Well, that explains why Saturdays seem to fly by, while time spent at the office waiting for the moment to leave feels excruciatingly painful.

The “Saturday Flit” Curse

The Irish and Scots have a saying, “Saturday flit, short sit,” which applies to moving houses and hospital stays. The old superstition bears that moving into a new abode on a Saturday means your stay there will be short-lived.

Even more bizarre is the hospital stay superstition, which warns patients not to leave their sick beds on Saturdays or they will soon be back. And it seems that, until fairly recently, some still take the old sayings seriously.

In fact, a paper published in 2000 in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology found that out of 77 018 patients discharged from the maternity ward, 8097 were likely affected by the “Saturday flit superstition” changing their Saturday departure dates to other days to avoid the curse (5).

References

1. “Week.” Britannica, 2024. | https://www.britannica.com/science/week
2. “Sausages, sponges, and silver: Modern New Year vs Roman Saturnalia” Warwick University, December 21, 2017 | https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/sausages_sponges_and/
3. Joanna Witowska, Stefan Schmidt, Marc Wittmann. “What happens while waiting? How self-regulation affects boredom and subjective time during a real waiting situation” Science Direct, Acta Psychologica Journal, April 20, 2020. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691819301209
4. Bowen J. Fung, Elissa Sutlief, Marshall G. Hussain Shuler. ”Dopamine and the Interdependency of Time Perception and Reward” Science Direct, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Journal, June 2021. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763421000841
5. Dermot o Reilly and Michael Stevenson. “The effect of superstition on the day of discharge from maternity units in Northern Ireland: ‘A Saturday flit is a short sit’” Researchgate, Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, March 2000. | https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51365094_The_effect_of_superstition_on_the_day_of_discharge_from_maternity_units_in_Northern_Ireland_A_Saturday_flit_is_a_short_sit