Blue laws

Coming from another country, the lack of what I would call 'Sunday rest' in the US was surprising. In my country, barely any shop is open on Sunday (except for the recent appearance of special 'shopping Sundays'); in this country barely any restrictions seem to apply to the Sunday as a separate day of the week. Some 'blue laws' still exist, I hear, but they do not seem not to make much difference.
Personally, I still have not made up my mind about the correct way to set apart this first day of the week. Chesterton's observations in chapter XXV of 'Tremendous Trifles' are helpful, though. He describes having to travel to give an address on a Sunday in England and his problems in getting to his destination.

Now it was very difficult to get down to it at all on Sunday afternoon, owing to the indescribable state into which our national laws and customs have fallen in connection with the seventh day. It is not Puritanism; it is simply anarchy. [-] The absurdity of the modern English convention is that is does not let a man sit still; it only perpetually trips him up when it has forced him to walk about. Our Sabbatarianism does not forbid us to ask a man in Battersea to come and talk in Hertfordshire; it only prevents his getting there. I can understand that a deity might be worshiped with joys, with flowers, and fireworks in the old European style. I can understand that a deity might be worshiped with sorrows. But I cannot imagine any deity being worshiped with inconveniences.