Katwijk could let shops open on Sundays; Christian politicians looking to block plans

Katwijk will investigate whether there is support in the municipality to let shops open on Sundays. Durf, the largest party in the municipality with 9 seats, wants to allow shopping on Sundays. The two Christian parties SGP (5) and ChristenUnie (4) want to preserve the “Sunday rest” in the relatively religious fishing village. The investigation is a compromise, with the stipulation that Sunday shopping won’t be allowed during this board’s period, the Volkskrant reports.

Katwijk is one of the last municipalities in the region that still insists on the Sunday rest. Durf thinks it's time to start moving with the times. “We too cannot escape the national trend of secularization,” faction leader Max van Duijn said. “The Christian community here is still large but is gradually shrinking. We see this study as a first step to make progress in this discussion.”

Van Duijn pointed to “demographic changes” happening in the municipality. Katwijk has grown considerably in recent years and the population no longer consists only of Christians with the surnames Guijt, Van Duijn, Haasnoot, or Van der Plas, he said. A new district is being built on the former military airfield of Valkenburg with 5,600 homes. “People from outside the will also live there,” Van Duijn said. “They will simply want to do their shopping on Sundays.”

According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), atheists outnumbered religious people in the country last year with 53 percent of the population considering themselves not religious. Only 30 percent of the Dutch population aged 15 or older fell into the two large Christian groups of Roman Catholic (17 percent) and Protestant (13 percent). Six percent were Muslim, and the other six percent followed a different faith.

But the Christian parties will hear nothing of it. SGP leader Dirk Remmelzwaal told the Volkskrant that they agreed to the study with reluctance. “That was a strict requirement of Durf, so we couldn’t get out of it.” He called it “the attack on Sundays” and fears that Katwijk will “suffer” the same fate as Hoeksche Waard, another traditionally Christian Zuid-Holland municipality that now allows shopping on Sundays in various village centers.

Remmelzwaal said he also noticed that Katwijk is becoming busier on Sundays with people watching television or taking their bikes. “That causes pain and sorrow for Christians,” he said. According to Remmelzwaal, he tries to take account of minorities in the village. “Why can’t others do the same for us?”