A memory of an uncle (fiction)

An uncle of mine used to make a point of not buying, or reading, any newspaper with a Sunday publication date.

He would explain this in a mutter about the day of rest.

When I was of a certain age, I thought I understood this. He meant that reading the paper was a form of labor for him -- presumably laboring as a conscientious citizen to remain well informed. And HE would not do that labor on a Sunday.

But that isn't what he meant. Later I discovered he felt anger toward the non-Christian or inadequately Christian folks who put out a paper on a Sunday.

This did not make sense to me. Although still quite young and inexperienced with the working world, I knew enough to understand that most of the work involved in the Sunday (morning!) papers must have been done on Saturday. My uncle did not regard Saturday as the sabbath, yet he was unhappy about that work because of the date printed on it. Or maybe he was especially unhappy about the guys driving the delivery trucks.

At any rate, I never heard him express unhappiness about Monday papers.

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