From Deseret News archives:
Open on Sunday? 84% of major Utah stores do business on the Sabbath
Times have changed radically. But they have changed less in Utah County than in other parts of the state.
About half of the major stores in Utah County now open on Sundays, a significant increase from 50 years ago. But elsewhere in the state, nine of every 10 stores now open on Sundays a monumental increase.
Those findings emerge from Deseret Morning News research of 2,476 retail stores statewide, including nearly all grocery and convenience stores in the state plus larger retailers, chain stores and businesses in the state's major shopping malls.
It suggests that to a majority of Utahns, the Ten Commandments may have shrunken to just the Nine Commandments with many discounting Jehovah's biblical command to Moses to, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," or at least interpreting it to mean that Sunday shopping is OK.
Only 6 percent of Utahns surveyed say they will never shop on Sundays, while 87 percent said they will shop under varying circumstances. And nearly a third of all Utahns say they would shop on Sunday as they would on any other day of the week and do not do it just to meet pressing needs.
It was not always that way.
All were closed
A study written in 1962 by the Utah Council of Retailers, designed to help legislators examine a then-proposed Sunday closing law, describes what business on Sundays was like in Utah during different eras.
It noted that during pioneer days, the territorial Legislature did not bother to pass Sunday closing laws "since practically all businesses were closed on Sunday anyway."
But two years after statehood, in 1898, the Legislature passed a law forcing most businesses to close on Sunday or face a now-quaint fine of at least $5 and up to $100. (That law exempted several types of businesses, including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, livery stables, drug stores, theaters and bathing resorts.)
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