Explain why I can’t buy booze on Sunday
In the fine tradition of not reading what laws really do, the Virginia legislature passed a law that:
giv(es) Virginia workers Sundays off if they request it and subjecting employers to criminal penalties for forcing someone to toil on the Sabbath.
They have since corrected the embarrassing law, which apparently shouldn’t have been passed in the first place. I thought the Sabbath was Saturday (seventh day and all of that). In my home town, we have a law (or heck, maybe it’s a state law) that says you can’t sell/buy liquor by the bottle on Sundays (by the drink is OK). Could be a church/state separation thing. I think I’ll start my own church that will mandate that buying booze is required on Sunday.
July 13th, 2004 at 4:56 pm
If you start that church, I’ll join!
Single malt, please!
July 13th, 2004 at 6:21 pm
Jesus would not approve.
July 13th, 2004 at 6:33 pm
Georgia, last time I was there (2000) had the same law…the worst feeling in the world was 11:45 Saturday night, realizing that:
a) I was out of beer
b) I was to sloshed to drive to the store to get more, and thus would be dry on Sunday night.
AFAIK, SC doesn’t sell booze in bottles on Sundays either. Not that it bothers me-I just buy it on Ft Jackson.
July 13th, 2004 at 7:43 pm
“I thought the Sabbath was Saturday (seventh day and all of that).”
Your assertion would be correct… of course, being a 7th Day Adventist, I would probably be expected to say that. 😉
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By the way, you guys down there have nothing about which to complain. In Connecticut, there is no booze sold on Sundays, nor can it be sold during the other six days after 8 pm (or 8:30, I can’t remember which).
July 14th, 2004 at 11:37 am
I thought the Sabbath was Saturday (seventh day and all of that).
If you’re a Jew or a Seventh-Day Adventist, true enough. But the Bible doesn’t actually say which day was the seventh, so the selection of Sabbath day is arbitrary.
As for “blue laws,” I think every state’s got ’em in some form. In Ohio and Kentucky, you couldn’t buy liquor (even by the drink) on Sundays until 1 PM. Not coincidentally, this is about the time that the last church services let out. Interestingly, beer was exempted from this (probably because the Browns and Bengals games typically started at 1:00).
Such archaic laws need to go. I don’t see any secular reason why one day should be any different than any other for liquor purchase.
July 14th, 2004 at 12:37 pm
Connecticut used to be 8 PM, but it was switched to 9PM sometime in the last year.
No sales on Sunday, including beer, is still in effect. They carved out an exception a few years back for when Christmas eve falls on a Sunday, and New Years Eve, too.
The one saving grace is that CT is a tiny state, so you’re never too far from making a cross-border packy run, hopefully before the drinking begins.
(“Packy” being the local vernacular for liquor store. )
This leads us to my favorite name ever for a liquor store, “Scarfo’s Packy Run” in Enfield, CT.
Like NY, CT allows the sale of wine & liquor in liquor stores only, leaving just beer, malt beverages & wine coolers available in grocery stores.
July 14th, 2004 at 12:51 pm
Louisiana is wacky. I think each Parish (County to you outsiders) gets to set its own rules, so in the Redneck/Protestant part of the state, you see a lot of these blue laws. In the Cajun/Catholic part of the state, I think they’d riot if they couldn’t buy alcohol on Sunday.
July 14th, 2004 at 1:17 pm
Sunday Boozing
Say Uncle is ticked because he can’t buy booze on Sundays. I agree with him that religious laws are annoying, and I’ve been caught short with no wine for enough Sunday dinners that I railed against such blue laws in New York. Being rather tactless, I…
July 14th, 2004 at 1:58 pm
No more so than the seven-day week, or the fact that no one is calling Wednesday the Sabbath (or worse, renaming it “Saturday” to make it so). The tradition of going to church on Sunday was to accomodate the Sun God; it was not based on any doctrinal disputes over which day of the week came first, seventh, etc.
July 14th, 2004 at 4:34 pm
Well, the seven day week isn’t exactly arbitrary. It dates back to when the moon phases were used to track the passage of time. Seven days is the approximate duration of each moon phase. It’s also how we got 28-day months (later rounded out to make them fit evenly in a year — the Muslims still use lunar months).
As for the Sun God / Sunday tradition, there are all kinds of Christian traditions like that which wrap themselves up in pagan history. According to pagans, the Sun God died on the solstice, and was raised from the dead three days later — usually around December 25th, a date which might ring a bell.
Similarly, it wasn’t until I understood the Christian and pagan underpinnings that I understood why Easter’s date was so weird, or why Easter is associated with bunnies and chicks. The pagans used to celebrate a spring fertility festival after the first full moon following the vernal (spring) equinox. So Easter is the Sunday after that. 🙂
July 14th, 2004 at 5:08 pm
I thought Easter was the Sunday after Passover.
July 15th, 2004 at 3:30 pm
Thib:
I think it depends on the church. Catholics and Protestants generally celebrate it on the date I described, which last year happened to line up as the Sunday after Passover. But next year (2005), Easter is on 3/27, and Passover doesn’t begin until 4/23.
The Greek Orthodox Church, however, celebrates its Easter on 5/1/2005, which is indeed the Sunday after Passover, but I think even that may be coincidental. In 2003, Passover was 4/17, Catholic/Protestant Easter was 4/20, and Orthodox Easter was 4/27. It could be that Orthodox Easter is the Sunday after Passover ends, but I’m not sure.
A handy Easter calendar.
July 15th, 2004 at 3:32 pm
It appears that the timing of passover is also based on lunar timing. In part, anyway.