WASHINGTON, DC—The past several months since year's change have seen the development of a widespread dispute in ever larger portions of the population. The argument usually boils up toward the end of each calendar year when people begin publicly rallying around the slogan: "Put Christ back in Christmas!"
Although the latest holiday season has ended as usual, the sloganeering has not. Rather, an opposition group, calling itself the "Valhalla Warriors," with headquarters in New Oslo, Minnesota, conducted a counter-campaign with the slogan: "Put Wodan back in Wednesday!" Other slogans of the group urged putting Tiu back in Tuesday, Thor back in Thursday, and Freya back in Friday.
A spokesperson for the VW, Olaf Thorgerson, 44, who also serves as the New Oslo town treasurer, put it like this: "We non-Christians who don't call the Winter Solstice "Christmas" are only disrespecting one day that the Christians want to name, and it's not even the same day of the week every year. But four times every week, there's no respect shown for the ancient Norse gods whose names are on those days! The Christians even have the audacity to have their so-called 'Bible study classes' almost always on Wodan's Day, without even mentioning him!"
Another group, calling itself "American Christians," headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, joined the dispute by objecting to so many days of the week having names of Norse Gods. Arnold Clagger, the AC president, suggested that somebody seems to have surreptitiously named those days "behind our good Christian backs," darkly suggesting that it could have been a pagan or satanic plot. He demanded that the government give the days "decent Christian names." He suggested names of Christ's apostles, or of New Testament authors: "Petersday, Jamesday, Johnsday, Paulsday, Marksday."
Taking a page from the VW's book, apparently, some activists in the Spanish-speaking community are raising a similar cry of indignation. Carlos Mantera, of Miami, Florida, has organized a group called "Preserve Latino Day Names" ("Salvemos los Nombres Latinos de la Semana" or "SNLS") and has called for Tuesday to be renamed Marsday, Wednesday to become Mercurysday, followed by Jovesday and Venusday.
Objections from linguists and historians to such campaigns, pointing out that the names of the days of the week were the names of the seven heavenly bodies seen in the sky (sun, moon, and the five then-known planets) and not of the gods that the planets were named for, have been lost in the din.
Several federal departments are being directed to tackle the dispute, but Commerce wants nothing to do with it, citing the confusion that any renaming would cause in the business world. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has also declined to participate.
Enter the Patent and Trademark Office, which has assigned a low-level official, Harley Dipston, to attempt a solution. He called all the interested groups together for negotiations in the capital last week. Finding little common ground, he finally suggested that everyone might agree on giving the days just numbers: Oneday (for present Monday), Twoday, Threeday, Fourday, etc. A devout Seventh-day Adventist at the meeting objected however that such a system would make Sunday the Sabbath ("Sevenday"), which would offend Jews and Adventists, "and probably God as well."
The final decision, on which all agreed, was to name the seven days of the week after the seven dwarfs: Doc, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful and Dopey.
The disputants have scheduled a further series of negotiating sessions to determine which name to give which day. One major problem appearing already is the dispute as to what name to give Sunday. Atheists want it to be called Dopeyday, but Christians demand Happyday. Others want Sunday to be renamed Sleepyday.
A final result may be months in coming.