Weird German Traditions: Dancing Ban on Silent Holidays

As this was off topic in another thread, I decided to take this out and give it a new thread in the proper board.

It's "Good Friday" (dunno what's so good about it) and life always comes to a standstill on that in Germany as it is a "Stiller Feiertag" (=silent holiday) where virtually everything is closed down, the sidewalks are folded up, no dance/music or sports events are allowed etc. *grumbles* Thank you, dear Catholic church for annoying me greatly by stuff like that.

You are annoyed by people taking a day off

RealGunner wrote:You are annoyed by people taking a day off

No, I'm annoyed by them telling others not play music or dance in public or show movies at the cinema or have sports events while having that day off. (And we usually don't have stores open on Sundays because the Church opposes this, too.)

neuro11 wrote:is that a rule or long tradition ??

Pretty long tradition that turned into a rule. Currently we are allowed to have a handful of "open sundays" for shops, but this is vehemently fought by the church as the sunday should be sacrosanct. Breaking news - 1/3 of the population here are not Christian and have no contract with those silly religiously inspired rules.

rwo power wrote:

neuro11 wrote:is that a rule or long tradition ??

Pretty long tradition that turned into a rule. Currently we are allowed to have a handful of "open sundays" for shops, but this is vehemently fought by the church as the sunday should be sacrosanct. Breaking news - 1/3 of the population here are not Christian and have no contract with those silly religiously inspired rules.

funny is that even for a day of rest (though its foreful rest in this case) people need to do something. they canr expect people sit down and look out of windows 24 hrs.

neuro11 wrote:funny is that even for a day of rest (though its foreful rest in this case) people need to do something. they canr expect people sit down and look out of windows 24 hrs.

The argument of the Church is that people should use those "silent holidays" to go to the church and pray. And that Sundays should not be for business and commerce, but to go to church and spend with the family. But again - 1/3 of the people here aren't even Christian plus there are lots of people who don't have a classical family either, so IMO this is pretty outdated. Well, at least on Sundays there are sports events etc as the aforementioned "dancing ban" only is valid on "silent holidays".

More info on this:
Dancing ban: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_ban#Legal_bans
Shopping Hours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladenschlussgesetz

Never knew Germany was that strict on such things. Never came across as a religious country lol.

England has a strong influence by the church of England and we have no rules as such.

Well, I guess this is because we like to put everything into laws, and as soon as something is a law, it is not easy to overturn it again.

And the religious thing is a bit weird as people are likely "on paper" Christian (that is, if you are born to a Christian family, you get baptised as baby and can't really do anything about it), but that doesn't mean that everybody even goes to Church or is a true believer.

To get out of the Church, you need to go to a local court and sign some papers, and many people are simply too lazy to do that (I did so when I was 14 and thus reached the legal age of religious maturity in Germany, although I went through with my confirmation first so that I could pocket all the money and presents one gets then from the family and neighbours).

By the way, people from the eastern federal states (former GDR) are likely non-religious as there the Church was pretty much frowned upon, while people from the southern states (e.g. Bavaria) are often pretty Catholic.

Well Germany is the homeland for one of Christianity's most influential denominations (the Lutheran Church)....and given how much of stickler Martin Luther was, this doesn't really come as much of a surprise to me.

RealGunner wrote:Never knew Germany was that strict on such things. Never came across as a religious country lol.

England has a strong influence by the church of England and we have no rules as such.

The law differs between the German federal states, the Bundesländer - some don't have "silent holidays", and others have them, but don't enforce them. But in the South, and the West, they really are enforced, for some reason.