Sunday Dinner

Sunday dinner has long been associated with home, hearth and family. It has become a symbol for a time when social values were arguably simpler, more direct, more easily understood or expressed and more closely tied to kith and kin. Some historians and sociologists will claim that it is an appropriation of the American slave custom of having their most plentiful meal on their one day off, Sunday, after their weekly provisions had been distributed the evening before. There are other, similar attempts to identify a single source to a prevailing and pervasive custom. All contributed but it is unlikely that any were singularly responsible. Much may simply be a result of the former place of Sunday in the weekly social order; the day of rest, Christian worship and family connection.

My point, as I enter the last decade or so of my life, is that we seem to be losing things, like Sunday dinner, that have existed for generations and that served society well. And it is not merely the loss, it is the pace at which it is occurring. And it is not just conventions that seem to be disappearing.  It is also some rather fundamental traits of our social character; things like the ability to respectfully engage and entertain contrary ideas, the ability to listen and actually hear, the ability to moderate our behaviour and, most seriously perhaps, our sense of humour.

For me, the defining characteristics of ‘homo sapiens’ are self-awareness and laughter.  No other sentient species laughs, finds humour in life and creates the comedic – from satire to slapstick. No other species is able to look at its cosmic reflection and react with a chuckle, a chortle or a full-blown belly laugh. And scholarly or psychologically focused studies that attempt to identify what and why we find things funny produce reams of paper and fail. Humour is the perfect reflection or consequence of our individual psyches, souls if you prefer, and their interaction with their environment. Humour is specific, uniquely particular and yet simultaneously universal. And it is disappearing in large demographic chunks.

The decline of humour mirrors, I believe, a corresponding decline in how society accepts degrees of difference and alternative points of view. In general, we are a more diverse social fabric but this is the visible and ‘enforced’ aspect. Beneath a thin layer of acceptance, there is an intolerance with opinions and concepts that challenge a popular view, whether left or right of the political centre. Indeed, there is a stifling conformity amongst the various echo chambers with which we have populated a pervasive, ubiquitous social media. For me, at least, we have entered a time of aberrant behaviours and expressed ideological certainties that were unthinkable even ten years ago; a time unlike anything that we have experienced before. If I was conventionally religious, I might draw parallels to “the last days”. It would be ironic but fitting if Sunday dinner was replaced by ‘the last supper’.