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Giving thanks for the Puritans

Sure, they were, in their own way, a pretty nasty bunch, but you can't help but appreciate their Blue Laws when you look at all the ads in today's paper from chains advertising they're opening at 8 p.m. today. Hah, hah, not here you're not.

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Comments

It might seem old fashioned and out of date, but I am glad for this existing part of the Blue Laws.

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It really shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that it was not, in point of fact, the Puritans who banned 7pm store openings on Thanksgiving Day, for the simple reasons that

  1. They didn't have an institutionalized, recurring Thanksgiving Day on the calendar
  2. Retail, as a discrete sector, didn't exist
  3. Such stores as did exist weren't holding midnight sales

In fact, the very idea that these are ancient, antiquated restrictions is a canard, a fabrication of big-box retailers who mount an annual PR campaign for their repeal. Small businesses are - and remain - among the biggest fans of such restrictions, because their owners are otherwise compelled to work on Thanksgiving and similar days. The first legal restrictions on retailers opening on Thanksgiving Day in the Commonwealth that I can find date from 1960 - and were enacted for the explicit purpose of ensuring that workers could be home with their families, and to preserve the civic celebration. Nothing Puritan about it. Moreover, the restrictions were subsequently revisited by a state commission, charged with jettisoning the explicitly religious Blue Laws, and putting in their place a set of observances that would ensure the maintenance of some occasions of civic rest. Keeping, in other words, the spirit of the sabbath and holidays without the religious obligations. That - in fact - is the point from which all the current 'Blue Laws' date. They were either found to be in compliance with that new charge, and preserved, or emended as necessary.

I'm incensed when, every year, local media outlets mindlessly parrot the idea that these are simply old laws, still carried on the books because no one's thought to update them and bring them into compliance with modern times. In fact, they're modern laws, enacted to preserve some small occasions from the inexorable spread of commerce, which otherwise encroaches into all hours of the day.

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...on steroids.

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It didn't stop them from delivering the horrible Globe Direct bag of annoying paper advertisements to my doorstep on Thanksgiving Day.

( I'd boycott the stores as a symbol of protest, but I never shop at any of them anyway. )

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I thought it was just MA, RI and Maine, but I noticed one of the Black Friday ads noted stores wouldnt upen until 7am in Bergen County NJ (which actually bans Sunday store openings still) and also certain parts of Hawaii.

And yes, if I were dictator of this country, I would ban store openings (minus pharmacies I guess) from noon thanksgiving to 6am friday, same on christmas and a 3rd holiday of your choosing (independence day?)

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I have been thankful for blue laws this year. Opening on thanksgiving is taking it too far. I was feeling smug at being the exception yesterday too.

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The earth still spun around the sun okay when none of the stores could open on Sundays at all .

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1. people work for a living during the week
2. imposing a particular religion meant that observant Jews and others who choose Saturday as their day of worship (Adventists, etc.) would have no weekend day to open their shops.

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No One , Exclusive of the substitution of Sunday for Saturday as a working day for our Jewish friends ( remembrance to Abie ) ,which I am not totally knowledgeable but I thought Saturday's observance started at sundown, sure it wasn't the perfect scenario for everyone, but I think it was more better than the mass consumer hysteria that is today. Back when Sunday was blue, people still worked during the week as you pointed out they do today. The difference is that back then they did it with out the luxury of ATM's , and even credit cards, instant cell phone connecting , the banks closed at 3 pm daily ,Saturday at noon. There was no internet or GPS to facilitate the shopping. Companies seemed to get their work done in six days, although i will admit I had a few 1100 pm Sunday night starts. The earth still got around the sun ok, keeping the moon in its place as well. Having experienced both shades of blue, I and myself prefer a Sunday shutdown. It took discipline back then to juggle everything, maybe that is lacking today with all this instant gratification. Sure , there is even gypsum sheetrock , no more mixing the plasters and unikal finish. And now you just turn the dial on the wall for heat, no more shoveling the coal. Plenty of time now to do it all in six days. And I even forgot to mention the microwave, and the fact that the criminal element could no longer hold up a joint, but would have to break in, maybe being a deterrent to crime as they would have to work harder for their loot. But leave the football alone, boy that Sam Huff was quite the linebacker , but that is a different story all together.

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Women got it done - grandmothers, and mothers mostly.

Now those women work.

Also, you are off by an evening on when most observant Jews observe the sabbath - it is Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. That meant that observant merchants could not open shops at all on the weekend.

Instant gratification? Try "massive rise in the number of hours worked by adults with families". Sorry, but Mayberry never existed in the first place, and I don't have Aunt Bea or June Cleaver around to run errands while I work all day.

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Well Swirls ,I never said I was a scholar of the Jewish faith, did I ? I had all I could to to master the latin of the Mass. It wasn't Maybery , it was life as it was. It is not all about you all the time you know, like some sort of Wonder woman. We required fewer things back then, and didn't need every thing we saw on the tv and its upgrades. Sometimes people can have unreasonable expectations. And , you know, some women were mothers during the day and worked at the telephone at night , if you are overwhelmed with your errands. And the diapers were washed back then, not tossed into the trash.

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I'd bet it was women who never got a break.

Of course you are nostalgic for a world where you never needed to lift a finger at home. Where people married very young, so men got servants young. Easy to want that time back, and easy to be blind as to why it was so easy for you.

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And now that the stores are all open on Sundays all is well? Well at least people were less whinny back then at least.

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