Remember when Sunday was a day of rest?

Iol. 16 January 2020

My mother was not a particularly religious woman. She was an Anglican. Her generation of Anglicans regarded religion as duty rather than a passion.

I remember, though, how shocked she was when the law was changed to allow shops to open on Sundays. This was not for any religious reasons. She simply thought it was unfair to expect shop assistants to work on weekends after having worked hard all week.

“For goodness sake! Everybody deserves one day of rest every week.”

In those days, shops and banks closed at around noon on Saturday and remained closed until Monday morning.

Nobody complained. It was simply the way things were. People knew the shops would be shut on Sunday, so they bought the groceries they needed for the weekend in advance.

Banks would be closed. Remember there were no ATMs then, so if you needed money for the weekend, you cashed a cheque on Friday. No big deal.

We don’t really have weekends anymore. We slide through the week, day by similar day, with hardly a blip on the road through life. Nobody needs to plan ahead.

I sometimes think my mother may have been right about Sunday closing. We have allowed shopping to become the new religion. Instead of enjoying relaxed weekends at home with our families, we dash off to the shops, anxious not to miss out on the latest bargains. We are more interested in stuff than we are in each other. One side effect of this shopping religion is that we now tend to judge each other by the stuff we have bought.

“Jimmy got a new smartphone, Sally bought a new flat-screen TV that’s bigger than ours.”

I suppose it’s too late to turn back now. If families decided to spend a quiet, shopping-free Sunday together, they probably stick it for two hours before becoming bored and heading off to see what’s on special offer at PnP or Checkers.