Sabbath

Sabbath

Sabbath or a sabbath is generally a weekly day of rest or time of worship. It is observed differently in Abrahamic religions and informs a similar occasion in several other practices. Although many viewpoints and definitions have arisen over the millennia, most originate in the same textual tradition. The term has been used to describe a similar weekly observance in any of several other traditions; the new moon; any of seven annual festivals in Judaism and some Christian traditions; any of eight annual pagan festivals (usually "sabbat"); an annual secular holiday; and a year of rest in religious or secular usage, originally every seventh year.

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Famous quotes containing the word sabbath:

    My paternal grandmother would not light a fire on the Sabbath and piled all Sunday’s washing-up in a bucket, to be dealt with on Monday morning, because the Sabbath was a day of rest—a practice that made my paternal grandfather, the village atheist, as mad as fire. Nevertheless, he willed five quid to the minister, just to be on the safe side.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    Is there any religion but this, to know, that, wherever in the wide desert of being, the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into a flower, it blooms for me? If none sees it, I see it; I am aware, if I alone, of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom, and my folly and jokes.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)