The Sunday Observance Act of 1677 made it illegal to do any work on Sundays in England. This built on a 1625 law, and was further modified over the centuries.
An Act for the better Observation of the Lords day commonly called Sunday.
It wasn’t fully repealed until a few decades ago. I find it fabulous that punishment included a few hours in the stocks.
The Lords Day Observance Society made it their business to pursue every possible law or regulation to have Sunday activities stopped. They even investigated whether they could ban television on Sundays.
Looking into this turned up a fascinating parliamentary interchange discussing more of this from 1953 as parliament discussed abolishing the remainder of the act. Lengthy, but a reminder of how government once ran. Polite and educated.
When I was in Germany a few years back, no trucks were allowed on highways/Autobahns on Sundays. There were exceptions for trucks carrying perishables. Is this still the law?
In England and Wales Sunday hours are restricted, Scotland actually has no such rules, as I was surprised to discover moving up here. Alcohol sales are limited to certain hours, but Sundays are the same as every other day.
The 24 hour supermarket down the road from me where I now live is open all night every night, including Easter weekend and I think even Christmas. My old local (which stopped being 24 hrs after Covid) would open at midnight on the day after Easter Monday, having been closed most of the day.
Yes, and there is wide support for it as the autobahns are congested with truck traffic during the working week (a significant portion of it transiting Germany) and the driving public prefer uncongested roads for recreational trips on Sundays. Most neighbouring countries have similar rules, most strict in Austria and Switzerland.
I never lived in Bergen County. Blue laws in most of the state went away a long time ago. I do remember as a child that most stores were closed. One of the exceptions were hardware stores, but they were limited as to what they could sell. I remember going with my father to the late lamented Builders Emporium. There were a large areas of the store and also individual pallets that were roped off. They contained the items that they weren’t allowed to sell. I was just a child, but I still thought it was very bizarre.
When I was stationed in Germany many moons ago, store hours were not conducive to two income families. It was certainly more convenient if you didn’t have to work all day. Stores were only open after 5 or 6 on Thursday nights. They were only open half day Saturday except for one Saturday out of the month, which was called long Saturday. I don’t know if it’s still like that.
No, that’s mostly gone, stores can open as long as they want on Saturdays, though many smaller shops, especially in smaller towns, voluntarily close earlier (mostly around 2 PM) on Saturdays. The general ban for opening stores on Sundays still stands though, although there can be many exceptions made locally for special events when the stores in a certain town or city can be opened.
ETA: and liked mentioned before, the closing of shops on Sundays is common interest of the Churches and the trade workers’ unions, so these laws have strong support.
I remember long saturdays being a mad house in the city. Since I lived in the barracks I didn’t have much shopping that I had to do anyway. It didn’t really affect me. It meant a lot to those who were there with families and lived on the economy.
There also was a long Thursday (late 90s?), when stores could be open until 8 PM instead of closing at 6 PM. It was known as “Scheilado”, “Scheiß langer Donnerstag”.
Btw., there’s also the tradition of “Stille Feiertage”, “quiet holidays”, in Germany. Those are holidays that are meant to be held in a solemn manner, so for instance any public dance events are forbidden (discotheques and dance cafés must be closed). An example is tomorrow’s Good Friday, which starts in 1.5 h here. There’s even a bizarre list of movies that cannot be publicly shown in cinemas on these days, including “The Life Of Brian”. Of course there are loopholes, that’s why many atheist/humanist/student groups organize big private showings of the film at every Good Friday, so it’s watched by many more people than if it wasn’t banned for that day. It’s a bit bizarre, especially given that the majority of Germans (50%+) now identify as non-religious.
I‘ve seen a number of places in Canada where dealerships are closed on Sundays. Not sure if it’s a law, more likely it’s simply good sense - people don’t buy more cars because they can shop on Sunday, and they buy cars when they need them, so anyone opening Sunday just starts a race to the bottom, where labour costs go up for everyone but sales volume doesn’t. Some dealerships you can drive through on Sundays, some are chained off but you can walk around and look in the windows.
I can’t answer your question about shopping hours in East Germany specifically (because I grew up in the West), but I’d like to point out that mandatory Sunday closing hours in German law are not just a church thing; the political influence of the churches is eroding. The blue laws are also supported from the left (at least the traditional union left), who are worried that allowing stores to open on Sundays would give employers too much leeway to push employees into different working time arrangement.
Like so many things in Germany that badly need reform, this is one that is completely deadlocked; case law says that Sunday closing is mandated by the constitution, so you’d have to amend the constitution to get rid of it, which is, of course, not going to happen.
I don’t know; I knew this guy from an industrial city in the Soviet Union who delighted his daughter by getting her a fancy East German doll for her birthday!
Stalin actually did away with weekends (and seven-day weeks, for that matter) but, for whatever reason, it did not stick.
Looked it up; standard shop opening hours in East Germany were similar as in West Germany: Into the early evening (~6pm) on weekdays (Monday through Friday), often with a long noon break; half a day (until ~1pm) on Saturdays; no “extended Thursday” rule (that was West German); closed on Sundays. Note that mandatory closing on Sundays has a long history in Germany (definitely predates 1949, most likely even predates the Nazi era), so it wouldn’t have taken any particularly pro-religious stance to keep stores closed on Sundays.
I mentioned the later Thursday hours. I was there during the time of the reunification.
I also remember the silent holidays. I went to my usual club and instead of their usual music they were playing jazz that couldn’t be danced to. Not many people were there.
