To the editor:
I find that Dennis Hinkamp’s article, “Everybody needs some Sunday, don’t you agree?” is somewhat one-sided. For example, in a 2010 U.S. Bureau of Labor report, 35 percent of the working population is employed on a weekend shift, which includes Sunday. With that said, it seems to me that if these jobs were not available, the current struggling unemployment rate in this country would be even more distressed.
Moreover, though many people may not enjoy working Sunday, they choose to in order to provide for their families’ needs, improve their standard of living, and buy — if they choose — a 5 gallon bucket of powdered chocolate milk from Lee’s Market.
As for the “blue laws,” which were originally “designed to enforce religious standards, particularly the observance of Sunday as a day of worship or rest, and to restrict Sunday shopping,” as quoted from Wikipedia. Basically, these laws “fell by the wayside” along with the segregation of blacks and whites, and other non-constitutional archaic laws of our primitive past. Quite honestly, I do not believe that neither a government nor religion — of any sort — should have the power to tell an individual when they can shop, when they can rest, what they should believe or who they should vote for; after all, these are some of the things that make the United States a free country.
A day of rest is what you make of it. Those of us who have had to work the weekend take pleasure in the fact that while the rest of the population is working during the week, we can run off and go fishing or play a round golf during the weekday without having to deal with the big crowds. In addition, those of us who work the weekdays can take pleasure — especially here in the valley — that Beaver Mountain will be open on Sunday and the lines at the lifts will be relatively small; thanks to those individuals who choose Sunday as their day of rest.
As a closing thought, I am reminded of a story in the Bible where the Pharisees and some legal administrators were ridiculing Jesus for performing miracles on the Sabbath (Luke 14:1-6). Jesus poses the question: If they had livestock in distress, which of them would not go out on the Sabbath to rescue it? With that thought in mind, how many ranchers today, regardless of their religious, political or social views, would let their means of livelihood perish because it was a Sunday? I doubt many. Likewise, in this day and age when making a living is so difficult, who are we to decide when an individual should work or when they should rest?
Chris Blackman
Logan
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