TESCO has divided the Isle of Lewis as the supermarket prepares to break tradition and open on Sundays.
The rural community has long observed the Sabbath — a day of rest and worship — and thousands have signed a petition against the move.
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Locals in Stornoway are split on the issue, with some unbothered by the change and others upset that another piece of the island’s cultural fabric is being torn.
Writer and local councillor Norrie MacDonald isn’t religious but still disagrees with the move.
He believes the island’s traditions are misunderstood by many on the mainland and other areas of the nation would benefit from adopting their own version of a rest day too.
Norrie writes for The Scottish Sun on Sunday ahead of the controversial opening today.
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AS islanders, we’ve become accustomed to the erosion of our traditions.
Over the years one could see things being chipped away at and now, with the Tesco situation, it does feel like a big rock falling.
It’s certainly not something that I thought I’d see in my lifetime.
When I was a kid, practically everybody’s parents went to church on a Sunday.
Around church time, there was a deference, a respect, an observation of what was, at least back then, a ‘tradition’.
We weren’t meant to be out on the road playing. We tended to make ourselves invisible.
We weren’t allowed to play football on Sunday or ride our bikes, even bizarre things like not even whistling on a Sunday.
But as rebellious kids, we’d plan ahead. We would hide a football on a Saturday night down at the shore and go down and play, out of sight of the village.
The Sunday ferry debate was the big one that kicked things off. I think it was the Reverend Angus Smith who went down to sit in front of the ferry in Skye when it planned its first Sunday sailing.
That was when we started to get labelled as the last bastion of the “Wee Frees” and it has continued to get magnified whenever the ‘Sunday debate’ is brought to the fore.
The percentage of the local population who now identify as indigenous, never mind religious, has diminished significantly.
Looking over my shoulder, it’s easy to see how this changing demographic has contributed to a different perspective of what an “Island Sunday” should look like.
We’ve had the Sunday Ferry controversy, the Sunday Flights controversy, the Sunday Drinking controversy and the Sunday Golf and Swimming debates, all of which have thrown into sharp focus the strength of the local objection to anything which contravenes the fourth commandment.
Most secularists, and I would count myself amongst them, have happily accepted the changes, regarding most of them as progressive and enhancing our quality of life.
There was a clamour for many of the changes but I have never heard anyone ask for, far less demand, the ability to do their grocery shopping on a Sunday.
You never used to see people cutting their grass on a Sunday, washing their cars on a Sunday. Folk never dreamed of hanging out their washing on a Sunday. Now all of this passes without so much as a raised eyebrow.
I’m not particularly religious, but the changes on a Sunday have, in hindsight, been much more of a cultural loss when considered together.
There’s very much an element, now, of: “What have we got left that keeps us any different from the rest of the UK, Scotland, even neighbouring Skye?”
People on the mainland might think it’s strange, but if you measure us against Spain, Italy, Germany, countries like Portugal and Poland even, you’ll find that Sunday has a symbolism there too.
It’s not a bad thing to have that time when you can actually breathe. It’s always been a part of my life that Sunday is a day that is not just the same as every other day.
The trouble is a lot of people now down in the Central Belt have never had it, so they don’t know what they’re missing. If they did, I think they’d actually benefit from adopting a small portion of our ‘out of step’ ways.
It offers you a reset and a reset is never a bad thing. It’s always nice to be able at some point every week just say, you know what, I’m switching off the phone today, I don’t have to answer my emails, I can ‘wind down’ or switch off.
People here can opt in or opt out of that type of Sunday and it just happens to be something that I enjoy.
They say that ‘you never know what you had until it’s gone’ and that, kind of, is the feeling that’s beginning to dawn on quite a lot of folk.
People like myself, who often advocate for change, are beginning to realise that we have a unique identity and that we may have now crossed a tipping point from which there may be no recovery.
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I’d like to think that there is something unique about us and our ever-eroding ‘Sunday culture’ and I’d like it to stay that way.
Ultimately we can’t stop Tesco opening as it’s not within our control.
But it’s another domino falling that I don’t think is needed. It would be nice to protect some of the last vestiges of our uniqueness.