Edwards on Easter
As I had my rant about Easter Trading on Wednesday, today I’ll merely quote from well known left voice – Brian Edwards:
If I were a retailer, I’d be pretty hacked off that in the middle of a recession, with punters keeping their hands firmly in their pockets, I was about to lose two days earnings. And all because a couple of thousand years ago a Jewish preacher and revolutionary was executed in Judea and, according to his supporters, rose from the dead two days later.
I thought it was three days later?
So somehow or other we have come to the position that stuffing your face with hamburgers, pizza or KFC, eating and drinking up large in a restaurant, going to see No Country for Old Men (R16 Graphic Violence) at the flicks, or watching a rented porno, all constitute serving God, while buying plants or tools to tend your garden on Good Friday constitutes serving Mammon. Though it’s no longer sinful on Easter Sunday.
Praise be to such a liberal God.
In the first place, religious belief has no legitimate role to play in lawmaking. When and whether shops stay open must be solely a matter of industrial law and not of religious observance. Holy days and holidays must not be regarded as synonymous.
And Easter Sunday is not a public holiday. It is purely a religious day.
But if we are to have undemocratic and retrograde legislation, let it at least be consistent. Let’s not make absolute fools of ourselves by saying that it’s OK to make money renting videos, selling duty free watches and flogging pulp fiction at airports, but not OK to make money by selling someone a lemon tree or a spade to plant it with.
Either ban the lot and make us all wear sackcloth and ashes for two days, or give every trader and every potential customer the right to make up their own mind on what they’ll do at Easter. I’m for the latter. Let’s open the doors. Let’s breathe the fresh air of freedom. Let’s, for heaven’s sake, grow up!
I am sure there are many areas where I disagree with Dr Edwards, but this is not one of them.