Every year, it seems, Christmas becomes more commercialized. In NYC this year, we started seeing Christmas decorations in stores in October. In October. Christmas is starting to lap Halloween.
I was thinking about this when I read that the Catholic Church in Italy is working to repeal that country’s new Sunday shopping law. Earlier this year, in an effort to stimulate the Italian economy, the Monti government enacted a law allowing shops across the country to open on Sundays. The new law is opposed by a coalition including the Vatican, small shop owners, and some secularists who argue that a nationwide day of rest is in everyone’s interest. The Italian campaign is part of a larger movement called the European Sunday Alliance, a network of “trade unions, civil society organizations and religious communities committed to raise awareness of the unique value of synchronized free time for our European societies.”
The Sunday Alliance is not at heart religious. Sure, some Christians argue that Sunday shopping violates the Sabbath, but mostly the movement has secular goals, such as working less, putting a brake on commercialism, and spending time with family and friends. To be sure, small shop owners have an economic interest in ending Sunday shopping, since the practice disproportionately favors big-box retailers. But it’s not like the big-box retailers who favor Sunday shopping are being altruistic. They’re only advancing their economic interests.
The arguments for allowing Sunday shopping are pretty straightforward. Increased commercial activity means more wealth and greater tax revenues. More people will be able to find employment. And there is the matter of consumer choice. If people want to buy TVs on Sundays, why should the state stop them? Who’s harmed? Finally, allowing shopping on Sundays could be seen as a gesture toward religious pluralism. Not everyone observes the Christian Sabbath, and Sunday closing laws may create burdens for non-Christian businesses and consumers.
These arguments have carried the day in America. Notwithstanding the fact that the Supreme Court has declared Sunday closing laws constitutional, most places allow Sunday shopping nowadays. Americans have become accustomed to the convenience and see nothing wrong with it. A movement to ban shopping on Sundays in America would go nowhere.
To my mind, though, opponents of the new Italian law have a point. Economics isn’t everything. It’s not unreasonable to think that, one day a week, society should forgo buying and selling, even if that means a reduction in wealth and tax revenues. (Tax revenues? In Italy? Who are we kidding?) In a culture as homogeneously Catholic as Italy’s, Sunday is the only realistic option. Moreover, it’s not unreasonable to think that Sunday store openings will create a situation in which observant Christian employees feel pressured to work, or that Sunday shopping will threaten traditions Italians enjoy. Perhaps Italians don’t want a society in which Christmas becomes, inevitably, the Biggest Shopping Season of the Year.
So, to the opponents of the Italian law, I say, Good Luck. And Buon Natale.
Mark Movsesian is Director of the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University.
December 23rd, 2012 | 1:59 pm
I gonna surprise myself with this comment, since I do believe in leaving Sunday as a non-shopping day, in obedience to the commandment about keeping the Lord’s Day holy. You might say shopping isn’t work, and I concede the point. But the point is the collective demand of Sunday shoppers induces others to work on Sunday. If enough of us agreed not to shop then, the shops would not open. Arguably, any commerce which would have been done on Sunday would shift to the other 6 days, so that the economy would not be harmed.
However, I am not in favor of the government dictating the practice. Aquinas famously (or not) declared that not all moral issues should be codified into civil law, but should be left to the individual conscience. This is one of those cases, I do believe.
December 23rd, 2012 | 2:11 pm
“A movement to ban shopping on Sundays in America would go nowhere.”
Hey, I’m game. Conservatives need practice at taking hopeless positions to victory. It’d be a nice change from their main pasttime of taking victorious positions to defeat.
It’d help the Republicans reach out to working class whites and minorities who are forced to work on Sundays. The business interests in the GOP would raise some problems, as well as most of the non-Christian GOP punditry, but they haven’t exactly been leading the party to success.
December 23rd, 2012 | 3:00 pm
It’s not unreasonable to think that, one day a week, society should forgo buying and selling, even if that means a reduction in wealth and tax revenues.
It seems to me that this proposal, and the reasons given, are very much the kind of thing conservatives denounce as the work of the “nanny state.” If someone proposed a day be set aside when junk food could not be sold, conservatives would howl. But somehow a day set aside when nothing can be sold is a good idea.
Sunday closing laws in the United States may not be unconstitutional, but they are unfair to people who do not celebrate Sunday as the sabbath, and particularly to those who celebrate another day as the sabbath. Jews who close their businesses on Saturday would be forced to close them on Sunday as well, operating only five days a week when their competitors operate six days.
And what about businesses who need to be open seven days a week to make a profit?
December 23rd, 2012 | 4:40 pm
Perhaps, economics isn’t everything. But self ownership is something. It is not a legitimate function of the State to dictate to individuals what they may or may not do with themselves or their property. As long as individuals are not initiating acts of aggression against others, the State has no legitimate authority. Supreme Court not withstanding.
December 23rd, 2012 | 9:49 pm
As a retail worker I am out of work if I do not work Sundays. I would be fired. End of story.
Recently, I was told by some very self-righteous Christians commenters on Fr. Z’s blog that ‘nobody’ really shops on Sunday. And, that it is more Christian to stroll around the mall than it is to rake leaves or mow the lawn.
Saturday and Sunday are the single busiest days of the week at our store. More than 75% of our business happens on these days alone. Monday and Tuesday are the slowest; when we run skeleton crews.
December 24th, 2012 | 1:12 pm
If there is any economic stimulus from an extra day of commerce, it’s not the opportunity to do so. he shopping merely stretches into the next day.
A day of rest provides the opportunity to re-center our priorities away commerce. It allows us to approach the other six days of commerce from a perspective of its impact on family, community and the humans behind the counter/warehouse/factory.
The stimulus comes from the community’s endorsement of commerce over and above humanity. And that’s not really stimulative – it’s a cost to our organic economy.
December 24th, 2012 | 7:35 pm
I never accept the arguments about “but someone will be hurt or unhappy with” whatever decision is being discussed. You can ALWAYS find someone, in this land of the free, who will disagree with ANYTHING — including the one guy who doesn’t like the cross in the middle of the desert. People like that should be put in a room and told: “There. This is your place only; do what you want. And shut up!”
Relative to Sunday shopping et al issues, they are many things I would make happen in MY country, but it is not. I have bigger battles to spend my time on.
December 25th, 2012 | 8:30 am
Exodus 31:15 “For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death.”
Numbers 15:32-36 “Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. And those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation; and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” So all the congregation brought him outside the camp, and stoned him to death with stones, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.”
Matthew 5:19 “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
I guess the case is closed. Those who work on the Sabbath are “evil doers” and all-around bad people.
That is … if you believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God.
Merry Christmas.
December 25th, 2012 | 3:21 pm
I’m surprised by some of the comments here.
First of all, Sunday closing laws are not unconstitutional and some states and jurisdictions have them in some form.
Second of all, it is proper for a government to prohibit commercial activity in order to promote family, community, and, more importantly, protect what the Catholic Church teaches is a the “natural right” of common rest.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church has much to say on the matter, including: “Public authorities have the duty to ensure that, for reasons of economic productivity, citizens are not denied time for rest and divine worship.” In other words, the right to common rest cannot be left to businesses alone.
There will be, of course, a tension between economic liberty and government’s obligations to protect the right to common rest, but the Church clearly givs preference to the latter.
December 25th, 2012 | 6:55 pm
How about this as law: a company is only allowed to operate 6 days a week. The day they take off is not specified. That way a Christian shop owner can take off Sundays, a Jew Saturdays, a Muslim Fridays, and someone with no religious persuasion could take off, say, Tuesday. I see no reason why such a law would not be constitutional. (On the state level at least. I think it would be iffy to call this “interstate commerce”)
December 26th, 2012 | 8:07 am
Yes, more than “Luck,” I wish God’s blessings on them.
There was a “Speaking Out” column in Chrisitianity Today (CT) many years ago where a lady noted a friend’s comment, that he would not have to work on Sunday if all the Christians were not shopping on Sunday.
Also, CT once had an article by Eugene Peterson, “Confessions of a Sabbath Breaker,” complete with mugshots, in which he confessed his remorse.
The laxity of the Sunday Sabbath was was one of Wesley’s key concerns during the revival of his day.
And in the Methodist Church of once-upon-a-time, I remember my Grandmother remarking that she enjoyed Sunday School picnics at the Fargo farm, but “never on a Sunday.”
Today, the bulk of Christians are totally brain dead regarding this concern.
Hope more of us would be game for Kevin Jones toast above. But it ought to center on convicting Christians of respecting Sabbath rest rather than on seeking laws to make it mandatory.
December 26th, 2012 | 8:36 am
Words that are not easily forgotten were published in First Things magazine some years ago. They were written by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
“The Sabbath is the boundary Judaism draws around economic activity. What marked the Sabbath off from other religious celebrations in the ancient world was its concept of a day of rest. … what was at the heart of the Sabbath was and is the idea that there are important truths about the human condition that cannot be accounted for in terms of work or economics. The Sabbath is the day on which we neither work nor employ others to do our work, on which we neither buy nor sell, in which all manipulation of nature for creative ends is forbidden, in which all hierarchies of power or wealth are suspended. …”
The piece goes on to make this vital point, one which applies to other subjects, delicate and living subjects affecting human persons, as well:
“The Sabbath is one of those phenomena – incomprehensible from the outside – that you have to live in order to understand.”
Rabbi Sacks continues: “For countless generations of Jews it was the still point in the turning world, the moment at which we renew our attachment to family and community, during which we live the truth that the world is not wholly ours to bend to our will but something given to us in trust to conserve for future generations, and in which the inequalities of a market economy are counterbalanced by a world in which money does not count, in which we are all equal citizens. … It was and is the one day in seven in which we live out all those values that are in danger of being obscured in the daily rush of events; the day in which we stop making a living and learn instead simply how to live.”
Thank you to Professor Movsesian for bringing this matter to our attention.
December 26th, 2012 | 7:38 pm
When people criticize stores being open on Sunday (or, more often, being open 24 hours a day, even on Christmas and other holidays), I always think: think about the poor new parents who just ran out of diapers–aren’t they glad to have a 24 hour grocery store!
We all fit into a category like that now and again: we need something at an inconvenient time and it’s a godsend to have someone else who’s willing to work to we can get it.
January 5th, 2013 | 12:58 am
Did you know that the Bible says that the Sabbath is on the seventh day of the week? Not on the first day like most of the Christian world proclaims. In different places in the Bible it refers the Sabbath day as the 7th day and not on the 1st day. So the Sabbath day is not on Sunday. It is on Saturday. See Genesis 2:2,3; Exodus 20:8-11.
And all this talk that we should not work on a certain day to be with family or to take a break from work isn’t correct either. Our God wants us to be with Him and spend time with Him so that we may remember Him and not ourselves. See Ezekiel 20:12. God does not FORCE people to worship Him on Sabbath. Therefore there should be no law in government requiring things to be closed. It is a choice of conscience.
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