Back and blue

When Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly warned retailers that they would face prosecution if their doors opened on Thanksgiving, he was citing a nearly 400-year-old-law, penned by Puritans trying to enforce their idea of order on the dark shores of the New World.

And as the year-end holiday approaches, authorities are watching for any supermarkets or department stores that try to do business on Christmas Day, citing the same timeworn legislation.

This legal relic is part of legislation known as the blue laws: rarely enforced and largely ignored, they have never officially been removed from the books. And they occasionally pop up, as the Common Day of Rest Law did when Reilly enforced the rules in response to an organic food chain's announcement of plans to stay open Thanksgiving. Today, the Day of Rest Law applies only to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But whenever the blue laws come up, so does the key question: why can't the Legislature shed or refine them?

Few people, if any, have recently been charged with blasphemy, still illegal in the Bay State, or yelling at a player or officials at a sporting event, which remains a violation of the law in Massachusetts for anyone 16 or older. And although it is technically against the law, no one in recent memory has been charged for the act of fornication out of wedlock.

These and other laws predate the Revolutionary War but remain in place because it is easier to leave them than eliminate them, said Gerry Leonard, professor of law at the Boston University School of Law.

''You have to take affirmative steps to kill them," said Leonard. ''If you take the fornication law, nobody gets prosecuted under that law. But the fact remains that there's going to be some constituency out there that does believe the law needs to be on the books. And if you're a state lawmaker, where do you want to extend your efforts?"

The strictest blue laws were meant to protect Sundays, and required one and all to attend service, do little or no work, and think about holy things.

But not all blue laws focused on the Sabbath. They also covered such notions as chastity, morality, decency, and the treatment of farm animals. Some of these laws can still be found in Chapter 272 of modern Massachusetts law.

The origin of the phrase ''blue law" is hard to pin down. According to Peter Drummey, librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the term was coined by Samuel Andrew Peters, a British nobleman who authored a tome about the wretched nature of New Englanders. Peters theorized that arcane ''blue," or Puritan, laws were put in place to keep the peace.

Another theory about the origin of the name involves the blue paper that wrapped periodicals at the time, or the blue paper on which some of the laws were printed.

One thing is certain: The earliest settlers in Massachusetts created the laws to control human behavior for the common good.

''They were less concerned about individual rights than they were about community rights," said Drummey. ''They were trying to build an ideal community here. And like all Utopian visions, they went too far."

If you were staying at an inn or common house, you could smoke in your room as long as it didn't bother anyone else. If it did, and you were fined the penalty of two shillings and six pence, the money was split between the ''informer" and the town's poor. Innkeepers couldn't let anyone get drunk, ''continue tippling for more than half an hour, or at unreasonable times, or after nine o'clock at night."

It's easy to laugh at some of these rules, until you realize they are still technically on the books.

Attempt after attempt has been made to get rid of blue laws. But each time, lawmakers instead decided to modify the legislation. At a legislative hearing in 1961, opponents of the ''Sunday statutes" demanded an immediate Legislative session at which ''the whole tangle could be set straight in one day." It wasn't.

The following year, the Legislature added a number of caveats to the Sunday statute, and businesses opened, with some restrictions. The selling of tires, batteries, and automotive parts, for example, was allowed ''for emergency use."

It was not until 1994 that businesses in Massachusetts were allowed to open before noon on Sundays. Only last year were liquor stores allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays. Also last year, the state killed a law dating to 1675 that forbade Native Americans from entering the city without an armed escort of musketeers. ''As long as it remains on the books, this law will tarnish our image," Menino said at the time.

During the past two legislative sessions, Democratic state Senator Cynthia Stone Creem has tried to repeal or modify laws that prohibited fornication, blasphemy, and adultery. A former chairwoman of the Criminal Justice Committee, Creem worried about the use of these laws for selective prosecutions. But her bill, the Act Relative to Archaic Crimes, has languished in committee.

''It's very difficult to get people's attention," said Sean Kealy, Creem's legal counsel. ''There's no great momentum to get them repealed. Plus, there are people who will argue that some of these laws should not be taken off the books no matter how useless they are."

Kealy said religious groups have expressed concern that removing the blue law that forbids adultery would amount to condoning the act.

Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com.