I’m not sure what is more absurd – that Massachusetts has laws that prohibit stores from opening on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s or that the Massachusetts Attorney General is enforcing them.
The AP story: Mass. investigates defiance of Blue Laws1
The absurdity of these laws, aside from their age (c. 1600s), is further emphasized by the fact that these laws are transparently religious in origin, specifically passed by Puritanical leaders to coerce the populous into conforming to a particular theological practice.
- 2024 note: This was a link to an Associated Press article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The P-I has folded and their archives are not on-line. The AP news website doesn’t let you search as far back as 2005 and the AP organization website appears to have digitized archives, but requires you to contact them to get access. I was able to find a local newspaper that used the same headline for the AP story, but I will not link to it because the article is 26 lines long and the webpage is 5525 lines long because of all the advertising on it. Those 26 lines are below
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Mass. investigates defiance of Blue Laws
Associated Press
BOSTON — Despite Puritan-era laws that prohibit most stores in Massachusetts from doing business on Thanksgiving, lines were 30-shoppers long at 10 p.m. inside a CompUSA Inc. outlet in the Brighton neighborhood.
The national computer retailer and a small chain of Asian supermarkets opened their doors Thursday to customers in Boston and other communities seemingly in defiance of the state’s blue laws.
Cars overflowed from the tiny parking lot and spilled onto the sidewalks outside CompUSA. Shoppers dashed through the rain to join a mad scramble for sale items.
Massachusetts’ blue laws prohibit most stores, including large supermarkets and department stores, from opening on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
But CompUSA manager Brian Hall said the store had a permit from Boston police to open at 9 p.m. for a three-hour sale.
CompUSA’s Woburn store also acquired a police permit and it too was packed with holiday shoppers.
Massachusetts officials have said stores must have state approval to open on the holiday.
“We’re confident retailers know the law and we will review any complaints that we receive,” Meredith Baumann, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office, said Thursday.
The Super 88 Market, an Asian grocery chain, opened at some locations. Last year, police in Quincy and Boston forced Super 88 Market to close on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“We are just helping the customer. Maybe they don’t have time to shop before Thanksgiving,” said Lucy Liu, manager at the Super 88 in Malden, speaking through a translator.
The original Super 88 store near Boston’s Chinatown always opened on Thanksgiving to serve the surrounding Asian community, Liu said. When the business expanded and opened suburban stores, she said, the practice continued.
Bill Regan, 62, of suburban Malden, shopped at the Super 88 on Thursday and said he appreciated the store being open on the holiday.
“There are some items you can get here that you can’t get at the small stores, things like fresh fruits and vegetables. If the other smaller stores can be open, why can’t they (Super 88) be also?” Regan said.
At the CompUSA checkout line in Brighton, some had mixed feelings about shopping on a day that 17th century moralists had hoped to protect from wanton consumerism.