July 23, 2008

Sundae Laws

2008 1521 page28 capEALTH CONCERNS ASIDE, when it’s 90 degrees outdoors, for some nothing beats the smooth, sugary sweetness of an ice-cream sundae. From the candied cherry that crowns its lava flow of melted chocolate to its base of vanilla that quickly begins to melt in the hot sun, the sundae in the U.S. is as much a part of the summer experience as a pick-up game of baseball played in a vacant lot.
 
What few people realize about this simple dessert, however, is that it was actually invented as a loophole to avoid stringent Sunday laws that prevented the sale of “soda water” during the late 1800s. As the wild frontiers of the Midwest transformed into residential streets and the bawdy songs of the saloon faded into “Sweet Adeline” sung by barbershop quartets, members of the clergy began to be concerned about the direction society was taking.
 
To Protect and Preserve
Sunday blue laws had been around longer than the U.S. Constitution. Earlier laws designed to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath had been much more restrictive and included gems such as: “No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting,” and “No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or the fasting day.”1
 
By the 1800s, the majority of the more arduous provisions had been abolished or were no longer enforced, but local ministers still saw to it that activities such as playing cards or buying or selling particular articles would be punished by a fine or a night or two in jail. After all, Sunday was a holy day—not a day for idle pleasure. While modern courts would likely find most of these attempts to restrict secular activities to achieve a religious purpose unconstitutional, at the turn of the century these conditions prevailed.
 
2008 1521 page28Then, as now, members of the clergy paid particular attention to the troubling aspects of youth culture. At that time soda water, first used as a pharmaceutical component, was thought to operate as the gateway between healthful pure water and alcohol when it was made palatable through the addition of flavored syrup and ice cream. The old-fashioned ice-cream soda was suspect, and ministers saw nothing but trouble in the stimulating bubbles. One author described ice-cream sodas as “a hint of cheap flavor, a dash of formaldehyde, a spoonful of poor milk, and a glassful of effervescence.”2
 
In 1875 the city fathers of the sleepy town of Evanston, Illinois (nicknamed Heavenston for its religious ways), became concerned about the fact that young men and women were spending their Sunday hours at the local soda fountain.
 
In response to the powerful local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Evanston was among the first to pass a law forbidding the sale of ice-cream sodas on Sunday. A customer soon walked into William Garwood’s drugstore and ordered an ice-cream soda. Mr. Garwood took a look at the situation and made the customer an ice-cream soda without the soda, leaving the syrup and ice cream. Mr. Garwood called this the Sunday soda, or Sunday, and sold it one day a week. The WCTU took serious umbrage at this name that mocked their efforts and demanded that it be changed. Mr. Garwood changed it—to sundae.
 
Ultimately, the Evanston WCTU, which had actively lobbied for both Sunday rest laws and prohibition, chilled a bit and declared that the sundae was a pleasant alternative to alcoholic drinks.
 
The law against using soda fountains on Sunday began to spread to communities across the country. In 1893 a pharmacy trade magazine reported that in Roanoke, Virginia, a pharmacist had been tried in police court for selling soda water on Sunday. The court then had to address the issue of whether the sale violated the law when the defendant admitted selling it, but argued that it was medicinal, whether plain or flavored.3 In 1909, days after the enactment of an even more sweeping local Sunday law, Chief Burgess Harvey of the police department in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, resigned over the issue. In his resignation letter, dated June 21, 1909, and published in the Danville (Virginia) Bee, Chief Harvey wrote:
 
“Since issuing a proclamation dated June 16, 1909, calling for a limited enforcement of the law, I have been reliably informed that every ice-cream parlor and soda water fountain, fruit and candy counter must be closed on the Sabbath if the law is to be consistently administered. . . . While I believe in keeping the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest, I cannot persuade myself that it is part of my duty as a good citizen to hold an office where I am expected to prosecute citizens who may differ from me in that particular.”4
 
The Adventist Connection
As Sunday laws repeatedly came up before state and federal legislatures, the Seventh-day Adventist Church lined up with others who advocated the elimination of Sunday mandatory rest laws. While a national day of restful reflection might have had its appeal, local Sunday laws had severe consequences for Adventists, who had been arrested for plowing their fields or doing voluntary construction work on Sunday.5
 
Rather than argue that the Sunday laws simply had the day wrong, Adventists argued that Sabbath sacredness laws requiring “compulsory idleness” were altogether unnecessary. When arguing against a Sunday law in Congress, Adventist Alonzo T. Jones said he would be just as unhappy with a law requiring Saturday observance. If Adventists were not inconvenienced on Saturdays by the secular work of Sundaykeepers, then why should Sundaykeepers feel that others had to remain idle on their holy day?6
 
Today, largely as a result of the efforts of Seventh-day Adventists, Seventh Day Baptists, the Jewish community, and others who valued the separation of church and state, aside from the occasional local law prohibiting the sale of alcohol on Sundays, most Sunday laws are no longer enforced and are generally viewed as anachronistic.7
 
Regardless of whether the law allows people to drink soda on “Sabbath,” or engage in other activities, worship cannot be a forced act. As well-meaning 
as city fathers and mothers might be, rules that ignore the core principle of freedom in Christ do nothing but sound a clarion call for those who delight in ferreting out loopholes. Sabbath observance needs to flow from something deeper than mere rules of conduct to encompass the grace of God’s presence on that special day. It is then that the Sabbath will truly be appreciated for the gift that it is, and its observance will fall into place with a delightful cherry 
on top.
 
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1. See the Colony of Connecticut’s Code of 1650.
2. Porter Lander McClintock, Literature in the Elementary School (University of Chicago Press, 1907), p. 289.
3. American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record (New York, June 15, 1893), p. 1.
4. Colcord, Willard Allen and William Addison Blakely, American State Papers Bearing on Sunday Legislation (The Religious Liberty Association, Washington, D.C., 1911), p. 730.
5. Alonzo T. Jones described several of these cases in his book Civil Government and Religion, published in 1889.
6. Civil Government and Religion, p. 145.
7. In McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Sunday closing law is permissible if it is written for a 
secular purpose. This is worth noting in light of Adventist eschatology.
 
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Michael D. Peabody is an attorney in Los Angeles, and editor of ReligiousLiberty.TV, a new Web site dedicated to the celebration of religious freedom.

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