Some regions are open for Easter Sunday, others have opted for a closed shop approach.

OPINION: The entire English-speaking world has tied itself in a complicated bureaucratic knot around Easter Trading laws.

Anyone trying to research Good Friday and easter Trading hours in the United States, Canada, and Australia will find complex rules that can be a headache for retailers trading nationally, and travellers trying to work out what will be open when they arrive.

It's been driven by countries devolving decision-making to regions, states and cities, insulating central government and politicians from upsetting religious sections of the population.

New Zealand's been no different.

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In 2016, the Shop Trading Hours Act was amended, allowing local councils to create local policies to allow shop trading across their entire district or in limited areas on Easter Sunday.

That's left a patchwork of Easter Sunday "yes" and "no" retail zones across the country.

The Shop Trading Hours Act also gave all shop employees the ability to refuse to work on Easter Sunday, without providing a reason to their employer.

When you start banning stuff, things get messy very quickly. Exemptions are often needed to avoid creating negative unintentional consequences.

Many countries, New Zealand included, also created rules and exemptions allowing shops deemed essential (pharmacies, for example), or beneficial (garden centres, bike stores) to open on Easter Sunday.

Many also created exempt trading zones in places where people were certain to be, such as airports and train stations.

Some did a big store/little store divide, allowing small retailers to open, while prohibiting big ones from opening.

In the United Kingdom, a nation of small shopkeepers, this was driven by a belief that the self-employed should be free to be masters of their own destinies.

I suspect that in an era of giant retail chains, there was a cheerful political will to give the little guys a boost through a day free of the crushing competitive efficiency of the big stores.

123rf When you start banning stuff, things get messy very quickly.

But none of the countries dared to extend the trading restrictions to cyber-space, meaning shops that are legally closed physically, can carry on selling stuff online.

In effect, Easter is special in the physical world, but retail does not grind to a halt. It remains a 24/7, 365 days a year operation in the virtual world.

The majority of Kiwis aren't bothered if shops open on Good Friday, or Easter Sunday, but on balance would find it more convenient for them to be open.

Some, however, feel the views of a religious minority are being forced on them.

A Stuff poll of 17,500 people saw roughly a quarter (27 per cent) in favour of having some non-retail days, but comments suggested many weren't driven by religiosity.

Many just felt that Kiwis genuinely needed a mental break from constant retail and consumerism.

For them, Easter should be family time regardless of race, culture or creed, where parents are actually forced to do something with kids that doesn't involve dragging them round a mall.

While I have a lot of sympathy for that, families can have that any Sunday they choose to, and I can't help but feel that Easter trading laws are a giant political cop-out, both here and overseas, a collective failure of political consistency.

I'm a fan of one law for all, not a patchwork of local laws and by-laws.

While there might be an argument for different laws in a patchwork of states linked in a federal union like the US, where different states have genuinely different cultural and religious make-ups, I find it hard to accept that's the case in New Zealand.

In New Zealand, we now have three types of council positions on Easter opening hours: those that have said "stay closed", those that have said "go, ahead, open", and those that haven't bothered to even ask the question.

In the long-term, the political cop-out will probably do what central politicians weren't brave enough to do, and put an end to Easter shop closures.