KEY POINTS:
It seems unthinkable now, but there was a time when shops were not allowed to trade on Sundays - any old Sunday, not just the most important Sunday on the Christian calendar (that would be Easter Sunday to you heathens).
As recently as 1990 shops were also forced
to keep their doors closed on 9 out of 11 public holidays.
I don't remember such a time. As far as I'm concerned, shops have always been open in the weekends. Like my daughter, who was born that year, I can't even imagine what we did with ourselves before trading hours were liberalised and shopping became part of our weekends.
I've had cause to be grateful for the convenience. It means I can leave things to the last minute, a tendency that my children have inherited, and which usually manifests itself on Sunday evenings when at least one of them suddenly remembers - five minutes before the shops close - an essential bit of homework equipment they absolutely must have. Still, I'm the aunt who had to raid the local dairy on Easter Sunday for bubble mixture and lollipops for a 2-year-old niece's birthday present.
If you'd asked me then, I'd have been entirely sympathetic to those two bills allowing all shops to open their doors on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
That would leave only Christmas and Anzac morning as non-shopping days, though you'd have to wonder why we would stop there.
What possible justification would there be for depriving New Zealanders of their inalienable right to shop on any day of the year?
None, as far as I can see. Especially when the reasons to trade are put so compellingly by the Chambers of Commerce.
They say unrestricted Easter trading will be good for economic growth, will improve productivity, make New Zealand a more desirable tourist destination, improve New Zealand's international image and allow workers to benefit from the generous provision of present labour market regulation.
To which I say, if we can achieve all that by opening up the shops at Easter, why not go for broke and include Christmas and Anzac morning?
Never mind that shopping isn't among the chief reasons for tourists visiting New Zealand; that even in a shoppers' paradise like Paris most shops are closed on Sundays and festivals; that retail workers don't at present get holiday rates for working on Easter Sunday; and that it's only because people have the time off at Easter in the first place that there's so much demand for retailers to be open.
Why, you'd have to ask, do we bother marking these holidays at all?
For the 51 per cent of New Zealanders who describe themselves as Christians, the answer is simple. Easter is a time to reflect on an event that is the foundation of Christianity.
As a former Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Darling, said of the resurrection: "In its favour as living truth there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true."
So it is a time of enormous importance for Christians. But why should non-Christians have to observe a religious holiday with which they have no connection? The National Distribution Union is defending the line for the sake of their 200,000 retail workers who would, they say, be pressured to work if the law changed.
Not only would the Christians among them be denied the right to worship, but they would no longer have that time to spend with their families. The bills, they say, are anti-family.
Address the laughable anachronisms in the present system, but don't encroach on the last few days in which retail workers - one in five of us - can be guaranteed time off.
Cardinal Thomas Williams argues that if profit is to take priority over people, the outcome will be a society less human and more stressful for individuals, families and the community at large.
I agree, but there's something else at work here.
A couple of months ago, following a column on religious diversity, a reader pointed out that it wasn't the non-Christian ethnic minority groups who were uncomfortable with the fact that Christianity is the dominant faith in New Zealand.
It was secular, atheistic Pakeha liberals who have a sneering, condescending attitude to religion in general and Christianity in particular.
As a former atheistic sneerer, I had to agree.
National MP Jacqui Dean, the architect of one of the Easter trading bills, has intimated that Anzac Day morning will never be sullied by commercialism because of a growing celebration of the day.
If the celebration of Easter - arguably by a larger section of the community - is considered less worthy, it must be the religious strings we object to.
I don't think Dean can have it both ways. If there is no longer any justification for shutting up shop during Easter, there's no reason why we shouldn't do the same for Christmas and Anzac Day morning.
In a secular society, nothing is really sacred.
