We live in a shoppers' paradise. It's all day shopping seven days a week. And Sunday shopping is now taken for granted.
Before the shops opened on Sunday there was much discussion and talk about it. But it is now a reality, which is here to stay. No doubt the stores and shops that move large quantities of merchandise are making great profits. It is probably more difficult for the small operator. Staff make extra money, but there are no megabucks to be made by Sunday work.
It may be an advantage for people who are at work during the week and Sunday is the only time they can shop at ease. But getting to the shops has become an amazing hassle. And those who have to staff the tills, how free are they whether they work or not on the Sabbath? What was to have been hasslefree shopping has turned into a version of hell. It is another aspect of a consumer society that has to have whatever it wants now. The pressure is on to have the latest gadget irrespective of whether we need it or not.
The Book of Deuteronomy tells us to keep holy the Sabbath day (Dt 5:12-15). But St Mark cites how Jesus warns us not to be doctrinaire about what we do on the Sabbath (Mark 2: 23-3:6). In that text Jesus clearly tells the Pharisees: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath".
This passage in St Mark's Gospel is yet another example of how Jesus dismisses the rigid and blinkered thinking of the Pharisees. It is a question of keeping the spirit of the law rather than adhering to a set of dead rules and regulations. Rules can indeed be bleak. Anytime we get involved in passionate discussion about something or other, the hard-liners, the fanatics get stuck in and we end up losing all sense of proportion. On the face of it there is probably nothing wrong with Sunday shopping, but you certainly can ask if it has improved the quality of our lives. Or is it another sign of a consumer society gone mad? There are those who say that the great ideological divide is no longer between Marxism and capitalism but rather between Pepsi and Coca Cola! The developed western world is forever bemoaning the fact that we have no time left to relax, to be with our families, to have time to think and "chill out". We talk about not having enough "quality time".
It is a funny world indeed. On the one hand we seem to go out of our way to create the circumstances that bring more hassle to our lives and at the same time we want more "quality time". Modern shopping seems to have become a drug. We are sucked into it. We cannot resist buying all sorts of things that we have no need of. That particular phenomenon makes itself very evident at Christmas. We shop in a frenzy as if the shops were going to be closed for weeks ahead. The ideologues who condemn Sunday shopping may well have lost the argument. But the frenetic shopping that we involve ourselves in cannot be doing us any good. With the advent of digital television we will have 24-hour shopping every day, and all of that without having to move. It may indeed take away the strain of the shopping frenzy. But it is another element in that consumer frenzy that has to be a madness.
More time doing the simplest of things might well bring us more in touch with ourselves and one another. We may well come around to the view that a Sunday stroll in the park or the mountains is unbeatable entertainment. And we might even come to realise how much rubbish we buy. Full marks to the Germans for keeping their shops shut on Sundays. M.C.