Geenschaap

Shop opening times and intolerance.

Here in the Netherlands we have a law about shop opening times. This law states when shops are allowed to be open and when to be shut. But not only that, there's also an (much older) law about the sunday rest, and as you can imagine it's based on the Christian practice to have a rest day on sunday. That both laws are from way before the time of internet makes it possible to have a webshop open and working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The only restriction is then that courier companies don't deliver on sundays, but webshop owners can still deliver goods on a sunday themselves, the law never anticipated on that. So why do we still have these restricted laws? Why can't shopowners decide for themselves when to be open and when to be shut. One of the arguments for shop opening times is that it protects employees from abuse from the shopowners, but employees are no slaves and can quit their job or simply refuse to work on certain days when they want to. If a shopowner doesn't respect that they're a bad employer and does one want to work for a bad employer anyway? But besides that, this sunday rest law is discriminating against non Christians. Jewish shopowners, who are following the Tora and have their shop shut on the Shabbat, which is from friday evening before sunset untill saturday evening after sunset. But because of this law they also can't open their shop on a sunday! Note that the early Christians were also obeying the Shabbat untill the Roman emperor Constantine declared the sunday as the holy rest day in the year 321 as the most important day for the heathen religion of worshipping the sun. And as at that time the Christians wanted to remove themselves further away from Judaism, from where Christianity originated from, they embraced this practice.

But for non Christians in general it is restrictive. Why should anyone be restricted by a minority who want to uphold an old practice? It is not only restrictive but also intolerant. The (Christian) governments who made these laws long ago didn't want to consider non Christians and so does the current government of a country where a lot of inhabitants like to pat themselves on the back for being so tolerant. The people here in the Netherlands are in general not tolerant. The hatred towards the people who are questioning the st Nicolas tradition with the zwarte piet, a caricature of a black person, is one of the best examples of intolerance here. I think i could write a list of examples of intolerance that i see here in this country, maybe i will do that some time. To get back to the shop opening times, let the people decide for themselves when they want to open their shop or when to go shopping and when not. And let everyone be tolerant about that.