I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving; a number of state officials in Massachusetts must have been bored because instead of spending time with family, they chose to go after stores which were open on Thanksgiving day. Yes, it's still illegal in Massachusetts to be open on Thanksgiving.

In The Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby writes:

[A]s company executive David Lannon told the Globe last week, Whole Foods knows that on the most food-oriented day of the year, some consumers run out of ingredients. ''It proves to be a very busy morning for people to get flour or baked goods," Lannon explained. ''It's for people . . . who say, 'Ooh, I need more butter or another bunch of celery.' " [...]

The attorney general of Massachusetts looked at it and saw a crime. In a stiff letter to Whole Foods last week, Attorney General Thomas Reilly noted that under Chapter 136 of the Massachusetts legal code, ''the performance of work on legal holidays is prohibited, unless permitted by a statutory exemption." If Whole Foods opened its doors on Thanksgiving, the letter warned, it could face ''criminal and equitable enforcement actions to enjoin violations of the Blue Laws."

It wasn't until 1994 that voters in Massachusetts legalized shopping on Sundays and summer holidays like the Fourth of July. The restrictions remain in place on Christmas and Thanksgiving, though, because apparently people can't be trusted to do the right thing on those days and go to church. Blues laws around the country have largely disappeared because people wanted the liberty to choose what they would do on days like Sunday; Massachusetts should enter the 20th century at give its citizens such liberty as well.

 

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