Did everyone have a nice time in church yesterday?

I ask that question ironically, because while the big main event yesterday wasn't technically religious in nature, it is the closest thing we have to a national American religion that everyone can participate in equally: watching the Super Bowl. There is no overt praying (but plenty of spontaneous praying by fans of the team that is losing), no pastor or minister or priest or rabbi or imam, and no hymns. There was an actual wedding this time around (a first, surely?) but it was part of a staged musical event and therefore doesn't really count as a religious service per se. Nevertheless, an enormous slice of the American public gathered together around their television sets and all watched the same thing for hours on end. That's as close to a national worship service as you can get, even though it was completely secular.

The main object of this worship was, of course, football. The Seattle Seahawks badly spanked the New England Patriots in a gruelling battle between the two teams' very impressive defenses. A touchdown wasn't scored by either team until the fourth quarter, which is testament to how good both defenses truly were. Turnovers forced by Seattle's defense were the key moments which really decided the outcome of the game.

But the game was also watched by millions of people who care little or even nothing about football. For some, it was the only football game they had sat through for the entire year. For those who aren't fans of either the Seahawks or the Patriots, it was fun to watch without any personal connection to the teams playing (since all the other hopefuls had been eliminated). For fans in Seattle and New England, it was very personal, but for everyone else it was just a must-see sports event.

And football -- as Americans use the word -- is about as close to the quintessential national American sport as you can get. Few others in the world play what they call "American-style football," and as a result it is one of the few big money-making sports that is absent from the Olympics. Most of the rest of the world plays rugby, which is sort of "proto-football," but only Canada and Australia even have their own versions of what can truly be called the national American sport (sorry, baseball...). It's not just the Super Bowl, either. The lists of the most-watched television events of the year are always dominated by football games. Football is big business, as well as being a sport that is fun to watch.

Over the years, the big game -- the Super Bowl -- has morphed into being not just about the football. It is also probably the only television event of the entire year where many people make it a point not to mute the commercials. Ad time for the Super Bowl is the most expensive of the year, since the network knows that it's almost guaranteed that over 100 million people will be watching -- so they set their ad rates accordingly. And ever since the 1980s, corporations vie to produce the most memorable ad of the day -- the one that gets everyone talking about it the next day. This can lead to all kinds of excesses in design and creation, and it can lead to truly memorable ads that people remember for decades to come (such as one of the first of these ads, the Apple "Why 1984 won't be like Nineteen Eighty-Four" spot that introduced America to the Macintosh computer). That ad only ran once -- during the Super Bowl -- and yet it is still talked about as one of the best television ads ever. Corporations today want to create the same sort of buzz and lasting impact, although few achieve it to such a degree.

This year's ads weren't all that memorable, at least to me (this is a purely subjective opinion, I fully admit). There were a handful of ads that were cute or funny or interesting, but how many of them will people be talking about next week? I doubt many of this year's crop will achieve that status. There were a few that were just gross (singing toilets and talking hairballs), a few that completely missed the mark, and a few that were just too esoteric for most. The most tone-deaf were the ads desperately trying to convince Americans that artificial intelligence is a wonderful thing and not scary at all, the worst of which was the one urging people to "take a day off work," since the A.I. could do their job just as well. That, after all, is precisely the fear millions of workers have right now -- that their job will be entirely replaced by A.I. and they won't just get to "take a day off," but instead get handed a pink slip.

There was also, for some reason, a miniature musical concert or two. Again, popular music acts have precisely nothing to do with football, but when you've got a 100-million-plus audience watching, you might as well pull out all the stops, right? Many people nowadays watch the Super Bowl just to see the halftime performance, in fact. This trend also started only a few decades ago, but has become a major part of the entertainment value of the show.

I enjoyed the performances by Green Day (before the game) and Bad Bunny (during halftime), despite not being a big fan of either of these artists. Like many people watching, I had never heard a Bad Bunny song before, and also like millions watching I do not speak Spanish. This was the first Super Bowl halftime performance sung almost entirely in Spanish (with one exception, when Lady Gaga sang a quick song in English), but I didn't have any problem with that. I've sat through Super Bowl halftime performances before where I didn't know the songs and could barely understand a word here or there (because they are sung so loud or so fast), and all of those were in English. None of that detracted from the entertainment value of such performances for me -- I take them as they are. And I have to say, Bad Bunny's set was upbeat and bouncy and certainly made you want to get up and dance along with it (which is more than I can say about some past halftime performances), and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In terms of spectacle, it was impressive -- Bad Bunny giving visual references to Puerto Rican life throughout his entire act. I found it all to be informative, on one level, which again is more than I can say for some past acts.

The Super Bowl is (usually) also a national event that transcends politics -- which is tough to do, these days. It's a day of celebrating sports, music, and the cleverness of advertising agencies, plain and simple. Presidents have begun to horn in on the action by giving pre-game interviews or taped messages, but until recently these have been "Rah, rah, GO AMERICA!" sorts of apolitical statements, for the most part.

This year, of course, the choice of Bad Bunny as the halftime entertainment incensed the MAGA crowd, so much so that an alternative halftime show was staged featuring Kid Rock. But only six million people bothered to watch it, which is a tiny fraction of those who saw Bad Bunny. The less said about the alternative show the better, according to those brave journalists who watched it (just so the rest of us wouldn't have to) and reported on it.

But even Donald Trump throwing a hissy fit about a Spanish-language performer at the Super Bowl couldn't detract much from the sense of togetherness that the Super Bowl represents. For one day, America gathers together around our television sets and eats unhealthy food and drinks beer and cheers both the sports and the ads, and a good time is had by all.

The whole thing is designed to be secular (except for a few inevitable "God bless America!" moments) and apolitical and just as entertaining as can be. If it wasn't already held on a Sunday, the Super Bowl would doubtlessly have been made an official American holiday by now. Plus, we all got to see the Patriots get soundly beaten, which is always fun to watch (again, speaking from my personal point of view, here), even without Tom Brady on the field.

I lived for a period of my life without owning a television set. I would always go out and do chores like grocery shopping on Super Bowl Sunday, because there was virtually no traffic and nobody in the stores. Because on one day each year, most of America is doing exactly the same thing, whether alone or with tons of friends in a big party. So I hope everyone enjoyed the day of national secular religious services yesterday, as we all celebrated just being an American together.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant