The Quotable South, Part 5: Subtle Differences

I’ve always been perplexed by the differences in blue laws from state to state. Blue laws are designed to enforce moral standards, particularly the obserevance of Sunday as a day of worship or rest, though the only type of these that is regularly enforced is the prohibition of alcohol sales. But what I find especially intersting is the difference in blue laws in the North and the South. I would have assumed, before I knew any better, that they would be more strict in the South than in the North. And I would have been wrong, wrong, wrong.

So, here’s just a little cultural trivia about Tennessee’s blue laws. Here, you can buy beer almost anywhere (including gas stations and grocery stores). Liquor and wine are sold together in independent stores. You cannot buy liquor or wine on Sundays, because those stores are closed. You can buy beer on Sundays, but only after 12 noon… that is, after church is over. The one interesting local variation is that you can’t even be served alcohol on Sundays until 12 noon. That means, of course, that if you go to Sunday brunch, you must wait until noon before your waiter can bring the mimosa.

In a related bit, Tennessee has for a while solved its budget shortfalls with “sin taxes,” or taxes on socially-proscribed goods like alcohol and tobacco. The Tennessee sin taxes apply to cigarettes (by the pack), wine (by the gallon) and liquor (by the gallon). Oh yeah, and since I’ve been gone, Tennessee has gotten the lottery, I guess in order to compete with the casinos just over the river in Mississippi.

I just wanted to note that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that figures the South as socially conservative, the blue laws here are far more lax than in any of my recent homes in the Northeast (New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut). Pennsylvania is particularly strange in this area. But then again, that’s where all the Puritans were…