Shopping on Sunday

In the April 1996 conference, Elder Earl C. Tingey said:

In a recent regional training meeting for priesthood leaders, President Gordon B. Hinckley expressed concern that members of the Church may have a tendency to take on the ways of the world. He said: “We don’t adopt them immediately, but we slowly take them on, unfortunately. I wish I had the power to convert this whole Church to the observance of the Sabbath. I know our people would be more richly blessed of the Lord if they would walk in faithfulness in the observance of the Sabbath.”

A very important aspect of properly observing the Sabbath concerns shopping on Sunday. Unfortunately, many commercial businesses and establishments are open on Sunday. The world sees no conflict in Sunday shopping. But we of the Church have been counseled and taught by prophets to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world.” We should not shop on Sunday.

President Hinckley continued with the following instruction to priesthood leaders: “There isn’t anybody in this Church who has to buy furniture on Sunday. There really isn’t. There isn’t anybody in this Church who has to buy a new automobile on Sunday, is there? No. There isn’t anybody in this Church who, with a little care and planning, has to buy groceries on Sunday. No. … You don’t need ice cream to be bought on Sunday. … You don’t need to make Sunday a day of merchandising. … I don’t think we need to patronize the ordinary business merchants on the Sabbath day. Why do they stay open? To get customers. Who are those customers? Well, they are not all nonmembers of this Church. You know that and I know that.”

I don't generally think of myself as having a problem with this commandment. In my adult life, I think I have entered a store on a Sunday less than ten times, and almost all of those while traveling. Recently, Bradley and I have tried not to travel on Sundays, and so Sabbath day shopping is even rarer.

(The most recent time I can remember shopping on a Sunday was almost three years ago. It was Christmas Eve, and Bradley went to the only open store we could find--a Walgreens in the next town--to get some special medical supplies for the newborn baby Gee. This, I think we can all agree, was a special circumstance. We brought Gee home from the hospital the day before, and we didn't know we would need more of the special plastic shields with which we protected his back incision. So the ox was really in the mire, and it wasn't just because we pushed him there.)

But there is a form of Sunday shopping I regularly participate in: online shopping. We are Amazon Prime members, which means we get free two-day shipping on all our Amazon.com purchases. It has become second nature to go online and order some more lightbulbs, or goldfish crackers, or new tights for Em because her old ones are too small. I don't even think of this as shopping, because hey! It's an automated system--the computer is taking my credit card info, the computer is printing out an invoice...the Amazon.com people will come in Monday and take care of my orders, and it will be here on Tuesday or Wednesday.

At least, I never thought of it as Sunday shopping until a recent conversation with my sister-in-law Laurene.

Bradley's brother Skip works for Amazon. He, among other things, adjusts prices and keeps on top of demand. Over Thanksgiving, Laurene was telling me that this means Skip is often online, fixing things and solving problems and worrying about his products. That's part of his job, and it's a marvelous job and they are thrilled to work there. But it set me thinking.

E-commerce sites use statistics a lot, and I'm sure they are aware of how many people shop at any given time. I'm sure Amazon.com knows the number of customers who shop on Sundays. Because they are a website, they have to have people working on it all the time, including Sundays. So if they know that people are going to be price-comparing and shopping on Sundays, they are going to have employees working on Sundays, not just on keeping the website going, but on changing prices and adding new stuff and coordinating sales and things like that. It's profitable for them to be working Sundays.

This is just a long-winded way of saying that I just realized I have been contributing to that mind-set. I will order things online on Sunday, and this makes a profit for them. It's not that different than walking into a store and purchasing a gallon of milk.

When I realized this, I immediately started making excuses for myself. Excuse one: When I order things on Saturday, sometimes that could make people work on Sunday trying to get things ready for me. Or maybe it's already Monday in their time zone (not something you have to worry about with a brick-and-mortar-store), so I'm not breaking the Sabbath after all!

Except that excuse made me think of the spirit of the law, and the Pharisees, and their "how many steps can you take on a Sabbath", and I decided that nuance and sophistry weren't the way I was going to solve this problem.

Excuse two: Given the worldwide audience for Amazon.com, and other e-commerce sites, would the fact that I stopped shopping on Sunday make a difference to their practices? In other words, their employees are not going to stop working on Sundays just because I, Keryn Ross, stopped ordering things on Sunday.

Except that excuse doesn't even make sense outside of the Wasatch Front. There are very few places outside of Utah that have such a concentration of LDS members that a "boycott" of Sunday shopping is going to convince shop owners to close on the Sabbath. All the stores around me while growing up in Las Vegas were open on Sundays, and yet we never shopped on the Sabbath.

So I have (reluctantly) decided: no more Sunday online shopping for me. It just doesn't feel right now that I have thought it out. (And, to be sure, this is just for me. I'm not going to look down on you for choosing a different way to interpret this commandment for yourself. Sort of like paying tithing on your gross or your net income. That's for you to decide. So is this one, I think.)

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Advent Day 14: When Mary and Joseph finally got to Bethlehem, it was so crowded that there was no place for them to stay. All the inns were full. So they had to sleep in a stable, where animals live. Luke 2:7 "...there was no room for them in the inn."