The day after Christmas Day is called Boxing Day. It is not clear where this name came from but maybe it came from people putting left-over food into boxes to give to the poor. Nowadays, it is the day when shops have sales and offer good bargains.
Under the Shop Trading laws, shops cannot open on Christmas Day. However, now with online shopping, many big stores offered their Boxing Day bargains for online shopping on Christmas Day. They can’t open their stores until Boxing Day for people to collect their bargains however.
The CEO of Retail New Zealand said that it could be time to change the Shop Trading laws. These laws were made in 1990, before online shopping.
Shops have to close on important days in the Christian calendar as well as the morning of ANZAC Day. However, in the 2013 census, 42% said they had no religion. Of the 58% who said they had a religion, 49% of those people said they were Christian. Many immigrants are Muslim, Buddhist or have another religion.
Listen to March 29th 2013 and April 11th 2009 to hear more about Shop Trading laws at Easter and other holidays.
Vocabulary
• left-over – what you have left or what remains after everyone has finished
• trading (adj) , trade (n and v) – to trade means to buy and sell
• retail (n, adj, v)- to sell, selling
• CEO – Chief Executive Officer
• census – official count of people and residences in NZ