Where we live (Southern Germany - Bavaria) the shops are closed every Sunday and bank holiday (legally not allowed to open, with some exceptions for petrol stations and bakeries, bakeries only open 6am - 10.30am, 12 in bigger towns). Grocery shops are generally open 8am - 8pm Mon - Sat, although small corner shop type shops close for lunch for up to 3 hours, and do things like only opening in the morning during the school holidays, and even small supermarkets in small towns shut at lunch time on Saturdays. 8pm closing is a new thing, used to be 6pm until a couple of years ago.
A few years ago the shops here only opened "office hours" - then I really wonder how households where nobody stayed home bought essential groceries!
When we moved here though I did joke we were moving to 1950! It is amazing how used you get to being able to buy a pint of milk or some ingredient you have forgotten on a Sunday, or ask DH to pop out for nappies at 9pm when you realise you only have 1 left! Took almost a year to totally adjust to having to be organised or make do, but don't miss it now tbh.
In the UK I used to order groceries online or do a supermarket shop soon after the shops opened on a Sunday when they were empty, and did prefer that to fighting through the crowds on a Saturday I must say. But nobody actually needs to shop on bank holidays or Sundays and one guaranteed day off a week must be nice for retail staff to know they will get with their families, so I agree it is a nice idea, though I am not religious at all. Grocery shops do need to be open longer than office hours though, otherwise it means it makes being a working mum even harder - no co-incidence that very, very few mothers work more than very part time hours in our local area (though this is also more to do with school finishing by lunch time).