Is the Church right or am I just getting old?

I must be getting old or something. This morning, the news reported that Church groups take exception to major football matches being scheduled on Easter Sunday, the holiest day in the Christian calendar. Today’s match, Aston Villa against Everton, is in their direct line of fire. The Church groups say that they now accept that Sunday is a working day for many people but that Easter Sunday, when shops are shut by law, should be different. Scheduling major football fixtures on this holy day shows, they say, disdain for the country’s religious traditions and lack of sensitivity toward many football supporters and employees.

Well, as a Jew, I heartily agree with them but I’d go one stage further. Not only do I think that Easter Sunday, Christmas Day and all major Christian festivals should be sacred (we’re living a Christian country after all) but I don’t accept Sunday as a working day and believe that Sunday trading should cease too. We always used to manage when the shops were closed on Sunday and I’m sure that with a modicum of personal organisation, we could do so again. Lack of observance, dwindling respect for the traditions of the country in which we live and worship at the altar of the shopping mall erode human values and are perhaps partly responsible for, what I see as, the general deterioration of today’s society. People, and young people in particular, need to have the option of a framework in which to operate. You reap what you sow and by gradually removing all the boundaries we had when we were growing up we grind down today’s kids leaving them kind of rootless and aimless, unsure of their role and uncertain of what they’re supposed to do or how they’re supposed to behave.

Don’t get me wrong. I see myself as a liberal thinker and wouldn’t advocate the return of capital or corporal punishment or anything draconian like that but shouldn’t we have a day a week when there are no shops open and nothing much happening? Wouldn’t that be refreshing and cleansing – and quiet? Wouldn’t it mean a day fairly free of traffic and general rushing about? Would it not give us time to contemplate, calm down and spend time with our family and friends? We could do olde fashioned things like cooking Sunday lunch, going for a walk and sitting down, all together, in front of a nice film with a bumper bar of Cadbury's dairy milk.

So, unusually for me, I find myself in complete agreement with the Church - on this matter at least. Now, where are my car keys? I’m off to supermarket.