Blue Laws

Funny what crosses your mind during church, but in Christmas eve mass I'm thinking about the whipped creme and peanut butter we forgot earlier at the store. Will the grocery still be open?

As a child, this was a very real problem. Everything -- I mean everything -- shuttered for Christmas eve and day. Forgot the batteries for those new toys? You were screwed.

Now, at least two or three options are open all night and all day (as I discovered last year on a bacon quest), and most of the society -- at least the shameless commerce division -- will be back on-line by 6 p.m. this evening.

Last night, my son never went to bed and spent his entire Christmas eve engaged with one after another fellow young person that received the same on-line based video game. For him, the world never hits pause.

So is this different, a truly unique innovation? Life is 24x7, and much more so for generation's past who had to raise or hunt for food and shelter. We do have eminence leisure in the 21st century compared to the 12th (or the early 20th, for that matter).

What may be different is that society as a whole lacks the governor it once imposed upon itself. I grew up with Blue Laws that forbade most businesses being open on Sunday in the South. You just made adjustments or did without. Most parts of the U.S. got rid of their Blue Laws, and thus business runs every day of the week without much difference (unless, of course, you're looking for beer -- and even that is beginning to fade). Banks never opened their lobbies past two, or heaven forbid three, in the afternoon and never, ever opened on Saturday. White collar work was five days a week from 9 to 5. Even blue collar work was a single shift at a time.

We look at the internet as the reason why we have a 365 lifestyle. Maybe, but it's just the tool; it's the oxygen of this always on world -- the catalyst, the accelerant. Class this as a ponder out loud but the way society has become 24x7 seems a real break, a difference from our collective past.

But, is it cause, or compensation? Do we race around at what seems to be an unprecedented pace for human society because we have this connection that destroys the previous barriers to time and space (it's always after 5 p.m. somewhere in the internet empire)?

Or did we create its importance to fill a genetic gap in our leisurely world? Absent the requirement to struggle 24x7 for food and shelter, are we now drawn to something to plug that hole in our hardwiring.