REMEMBER THE SABBATH . . . . .

This is another of our personal anecdotes from many years past, where religious intolerance again reared its ugly head, albeit in a somewhat left-handed way, strictly to serve commercialistic purposes.

Back during our Cleveland, Ohio residence days, when the children were small, we found it convenient to do the Christmas toy shopping very early, like around October, thanks largely to certain discount stores' being open on Sundays. In the span of about a half an hour, a cart could be loaded with goodies, wheeled to the cash register, and its content rung up at favorable prices, after which we'd be promptly out the door, having accomplished a major annual undertaking. The frantic December crowd-fighting would have been comfortably avoided.

According to memory, we performed this task for at least two consecutive years before the Christian axe fell, and thus recomplicated our yuletide season chores.

It so happened that the particular store we patronized was one of several in our area offering comparable discount rates on a regular Sunday basis. All or nearly all of them were owned and operated by Jews.

Well, this "unfair" competition didn't exactly swing with the numerous Christian merchants around town. While spending a relaxed Sunday at the beach, on a golf course, or else enjoying a back yard family barbecue, they were losing potential business to those Christ-betraying you-know-whos.

Lo and behold therefore, the city's lawmakers eventually yielded to the usual pressure from local special interests, by passing legislation which forbade any further Sabbath Day openings for retail establishments of this sort.

Kindly note that term Sabbath, which is always Sunday in the supercilious Christian realm. As everyone knows, Hebrew tradition devotes Saturday to such reverence. Anti-Semitism had found a new way to be exercised, under the guise of respect for a Commandment.

We've never forgotten that downright injustice wrought upon persons' being forced to close their shop doors on a day which was decidedly not their Sabbath. We deem this act to be yet another in an ever-growing list of evidential situations which help prove how Christianity, as practiced today, is virtually synonymous with hypocrisy.