[Mb-civic] Got the Puritan blues - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Got the Puritan blues

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  November 23, 2005

THE PURITANS of Massachusetts have been dead for 300 years, but their 
authoritarian ghosts haunt us to this day.

Consider the plight of Whole Foods Market, an international chain of 
natural and organic food stores, which found itself accused of planning 
to engage in criminal activity in its 14 Massachusetts stores this week.

What high crimes and misdemeanors was the upscale grocer plotting? It 
was going to open its doors for business on Thanksgiving. Shocking! It 
was going to sell fruit and vegetables and milk and desserts. And why? 
Because, as company executive David Lannon told the Globe last week, 
Whole Foods knows that on the most food-oriented day of the year, some 
consumers run out of ingredients. ''It proves to be a very busy morning 
for people to get flour or baked goods," Lannon explained. ''It's for 
people . . . who say, 'Ooh, I need more butter or another bunch of 
celery.' "

In short, Whole Foods was going to make its wares available to 
Massachusetts customers on Thanksgiving -- just as it does for customers 
in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and two-dozen other states 
nationwide. Bay State consumers panicked over an eleventh-hour shortage 
of dried apricots or hazelnut extract would have been able to get what 
they needed before the in-laws showed up at the front door. Whole Foods 
employees wouldn't have been required to work, but those volunteering 
would have earned double pay. Willing seller, willing buyers, willing 
workers -- an economist looking at such an arrangement would have seen 
the free market at its best.

The attorney general of Massachusetts looked at it and saw a crime. In a 
stiff letter to Whole Foods last week, Attorney General Thomas Reilly 
noted that under Chapter 136 of the Massachusetts legal code, ''the 
performance of work on legal holidays is prohibited, unless permitted by 
a statutory exemption." If Whole Foods opened its doors on Thanksgiving, 
the letter warned, it could face ''criminal and equitable enforcement 
actions to enjoin violations of the Blue Laws."

Ah, yes, the blue laws -- those rules and regulations imposed by New 
England's 17th-century Puritan theocrats to govern moral conduct and 
ensure proper observance of the Sabbath. The product of an era when 
''witches" were hanged, blue laws dictated what people could wear, 
forbade travel on Sunday, and made it an offense to miss church. The 
Puritans ''carried their efforts to control private activities in the 
Massachusetts Bay Colony to extremes unknown elsewhere," notes the 
Family Encyclopedia of American History. For example, church doors were 
bolted during Sunday services to prevent restless congregants from 
leaving early.

It is hard to imagine how these laws could have survived the 
ratification of the Bill of Rights. But survive they did, some of them 
for centuries. In Massachusetts, Chapter 136 long barred most commercial 
activity on Sundays and legal holidays. Not even Cotton Mather would 
have been able to make sense of the anachronistic crazy quilt of 
definitions and loopholes that the law turned into over time. The same 
statute that barred shops and businesses from operating on ''common days 
of rest" also listed dozens of exceptions to the rule, including the 
sale of nitrogen, the operation of garden centers and public bathhouses, 
and the transportation of ice, bees, or Irish moss. Supermarkets weren't 
allowed to sell groceries, but convenience stores were. Buying a 
painting at an art gallery was OK. Buying paint at Home Depot was forbidden.

In 1994 Massachusetts voters finally made it lawful for all stores to 
open on Sunday and the summer holidays -- Memorial Day, Labor Day, and 
the Fourth of July. But the old restrictions, as illogical as ever, 
still apply on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

''Thanksgiving is not like any other day," Reilly insists. ''It's been 
the one day when people didn't have to work. People should be allowed to 
be off that one day, to have a day to spend with their family. This is 
one of those issues where tradition wins over for me."

Tradition is a fine thing, and Thanksgiving is suffused with it. But 
what Reilly is defending is not tradition but coercion. Americans are 
able to decide for themselves how to spend Thanksgiving. Given a choice, 
some will opt for family and turkey. Others will grab the chance to go 
to work for double pay. It isn't for the attorney general of 
Massachusetts, or any other state official, to make that choice for them.

The blue laws are and always have been obnoxious deprivations of 
liberty. That Whole Foods might have sold carrots or cinnamon to a 
Thanksgiving Day customer who needed them is no crime. What is a crime 
is that there are still laws on the books that make such a sale illegal 
-- and latter-day Puritans who defend them.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/23/got_the_puritan_blues/
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