Turns out Monday-morning blues are not universal – and not only because some people genuinely love their work. The parameters of the weekend differ around the world, and occasionally undergo a significant shift. That's the case in Saudi Arabia, which has just announced that its official weekend will now comprise Friday and Saturday, rather than Thursday and Friday. The move was welcomed by many businesses, whose hours are brought more closely in line with international financial markets, while still leaving Fridays free for worship in the Islamic country. Oman made the same move last month, following countries including Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Algeria.

Brunei shakes up the week with a non-contiguous weekend, with days off on Friday and Sunday. And earlier this year, President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia announced the country's public sector workers will now luxuriate in a three-day weekend – although they still work a 40-hour week. Official hours are Monday to Thursday, 8am to 6pm, which Jammeh hopes will "allow Gambians to devote more time to prayers, social activities and agriculture".

A day of rest is found in many religions, but a two-day weekend is apparently a fairly modern concept. Witold Rybczynski, author of Waiting for the Weekend, found the first recorded use of "weekend" in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1879, and suggests having more than a single day off was a uniquely British innovation. It began in the mid-19th century, when workers started earning more than survival wages, and chose to devote time to leisure. They started taking a day off on Monday as well as Sunday – a practice known as "keeping Saint Monday", which was sometimes seen as synonymous with drinking, and caused conniptions among religious campaigners. By the 20th century, the weekend tradition had become more formal, with many factory owners offering a holiday from Saturday lunchtime until Monday morning.

In the US, the two-day weekend was secured in the 20th century partly as a result of sterling work by unions. And more recently, in the UK, there have been calls for much longer weekends – last year, a thinktank proposed that the working week should shrink to as little as 20 hours, to provide more jobs and family time for everyone. That doesn't seem the direction our culture is headed in, however. Instead, the current shift is towards greater flexibility, a notion that could lead to longer weekends for some – 24/7 working for many others.

Would you like weekends to be organised differently – to have two non-consecutive days, for instance, or a much shorter working week?