Bergen County is the last county in the country with "blue laws" that prohibit shopping for certain kinds of goods on Sundays.

Here's how The New Yorker explains the laws: 

"Many jurisdictions still restrict some Sunday transactions, mainly the sale of alcohol, but in Bergen, you can’t buy a new frying pan on a Sunday, or a bag of nails, or a four-pack of Gerber Neutral Sheep and Polka Dot Assorted Onesies."

"This may not be surprising in a backwoods county in the Bible Belt, but Bergen can be fairly described as modernized. It is, for example, highly dependent on the consumer economy. After the Second World War, the borough of Bergenfield built one of the nation’s first pre-planned suburbs featuring shopping malls; the county is now a megapalooza of outlet malls and big-box stores for shoppers, many of them from New York. Yet, by the late nineteen-fifties, Bergenites had begun to place prohibitions on Sunday sales. At the time, such “blue laws”—historians say that the term stems from the color of paper Puritans used to print their Sunday trading laws, or else from a slang term for Puritanism in that era—were common across the United States. Today, Bergen is their last redoubt. If its blue laws fall, so does America’s last true sabbath from shopping."

And some history of the laws, from The New Yorker: 

"But by the end of 1957, Paramus was home to the largest shopping complex in the country. The impact on small retailers was substantial: within three years, ten per cent of Hackensack’s Main Street businesses would close. As a survival strategy, mom-and-pop shops—afraid that they’d have to work seven days a week or pay for Sunday staff—joined with church groups and residents concerned about traffic congestion to press for blue laws. Already concerned about traffic to new discount outlets along the highways, Paramus had passed its own local law two months before the borough’s first mall even opened. Two years later, the New Jersey legislature let each county choose whether to hold a referendum on a state-level blue law that would forbid the sale of clothing, furniture, appliances, and building materials on Sundays; twelve of the state’s twenty-one counties opted in, including Bergen."

Mitchell Horn, the co-founder of "Modernize Bergen County" and a Hackensack resident, calls in and tells us why he thinks the laws should be repealed (he says it's a challenge for people who work Monday through Friday to get all their shopping done on Saturdays, and thinks mom and pop businesses in Bergen's downtowns could increase sales "10 to 15 percent" if they were open Sundays). Caller Stephanie in Cliffside Park is in favor of the repeal because she says stores are too crowded on Saturdays. Beth in Waldwick (also in Bergen County) says "it's an outrage" and that she's boycotting the malls in Paramus in favor of online shopping. 

But then, some people are still fans of the "blue laws." Why?  

@BrianLehrer I grew up with those laws. We weren't religious but Bergen's blueness gave Sunday a different rhythm, kept us at home. I'm glad

— Bernadette North (@notbern) February 18, 2015

@Durer_demon @BrianLehrer Bergen County Blue Laws provide some quality of life. That is far from antiquated.

— Tony Stefanelli, CPA (@tonys667) February 18, 2015

Bergen County residents: how do you feel about these rules?