Hartley Neita, Contributor
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, December 7, 1980, the shops in the plazas on the Constant Spring Road in St. Andrew opened their doors to customers to enable them to enjoy the pleasure of Christmas shopping in comfort.
According to our commercial leaders, Sunday shopping would provide customers relaxed comfort without the crush of the crowds on week days.
It turned out to be the very opposite of these sanctimonious views. Sunday shopping proved be a new attraction for uptown society as well as for patrons from downtown. It was a brilliant marketing strategy.
Ever since Jamaicans adopted Christianity as the religion of the majority of our people, Sundays was regarded as a holy day, with some opting for Saturdays. Sporting games were not played on Sundays. Nor was there entertainment such as plays or non-religious concerts.
Stores and shops were not opened on Sundays. Chinese grocers opened a window at the side of their shops when customers knocked after church service to buy salt or flour, cooking oil or a loaf of bread which they ran out of. Easton Lee has this in one of his poems in, I think, 'Under the Counter' which quotes his father's advice:
"Go Church Sunday, serve God.
Come home after church, serve man."
OPENED STORES
For years, too, only drug stores and later pharmacies opened for about six hours on Sundays so that the public could fill prescriptions and buy over-the-counter medicines such as headache pills, cough medicines, pills and liquids for gas pains, and the like. Recognising that they had a Sunday monopoly, these pharmacies added other products such as toothpaste, hair oils, facial powder, cologne, perfumes, shaving cream, and other cosmetics. Later they included ice cream, sweets, chocolates, stationery and other items.
They had an exclusive market. And, this was the target audience that shopkeepers aimed at when they introduced 'Sunday shopping'.
I do not recall any protest from any source when this was introduced. I do not recall any sermons by our pastors or any statement from the then very vibrant Council of Churches. Forgive me if I am wrong. The trade unions did not protest; it meant double-time pay for shop assistants.
DAY OF WORSHIP
Until a week later when Rev. Earl Thames, a former moderator of the United Church of Jamaica and Grand Cayman, in a letter to this newspaper, reminded readers that Sundays had always been set aside as a day of worship and service for Christians from the beginning of the Christian era. But, he said, the widespread opening of businesses the previous Sunday was a "clear insult and disregard of the religious convictions of the Christian community".
This was done, he continued, in the very season when the Person whose birth was being commemorated. It showed the complete disregard of the religious significance of the season by many in the commercial world, he said. To those persons, Christmas was merely a time to make as much money as possible, even if this meant tempting Jamaicans to use the time set apart for the worship of God, to buy material goods. This was nothing less than the worship of Mammon and as such it was idolatry.
Twenty-five years later, every store and shop all over Jamaica opens every Sunday. No longer just at Christmas alone. There are even banners in front of these stores proclaiming, 'Open This Sunday'. They do not even bother to play hymns and other sacred songs on their public address systems.
Are we better off morally and spiritually. Let us stop boasting that we have more churches per square mile than any other country in the world. That means nothing.
