AHC Make it a common thing for Catholic and Orthodox countries to enforce Lent on shops

[baltur2]

In many European countries in OTL, shops are closed on Sundays, because Sunday shouldn't be about business, but about rest and the worship of God.

Make it so that in addition to this, Catholic countries wouldn't allow shops and restaurants to sell bird and mammal meat on the Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent, and Orthodox countries would only allow the sale of vegan food and invertebrates during these days.

 

[overoceans]

In many European countries in OTL, shops are closed on Sundays, because Sunday shouldn't be about business, but about rest and the worship of God.

Make it so that in addition to this, Catholic countries wouldn't allow shops and restaurants to sell bird and mammal meat on the Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent, and Orthodox countries would only allow the sale of vegan food and invertebrates during these days.

The thing is, Sunday laws also had a social-welfare aspect to them, ie. they gave workers a day off with their families, and helped smaller businesses(often exempt from the laws) earn money. So, even if the origins of the law were biblical, a liberal democracy could still justify keeping them in place on secular grounds.

But enforcing lenten dietary restrictions has no such salutary effect, so would not really viewed as appropriate outside of a theocracy. I'm not even aware that that old Catholic standby "No meat on Fridays", which probably helped the fishing industry a bit, was ever the subject of state mandate. Well, maybe Franco or Salazar might have tried that.