BOSTON (AP) – Attorney General Tom Reilly told Wal-Mart officials on Tuesday they had to close their Massachusetts stores on Thanksgiving, after receiving complaints the retailer intended to stay open.

In a letter to the Arkansas-based company’s local counsel, the chief of the attorney general’s Business and Labor Protection Bureau said state law prohibits stores from opening on either Thursday or Sunday, Dec. 25, when Christmas will be celebrated.

“For more than a century, Massachusetts has recognized that Thanksgiving is unlike other days – it is a day when families can come together and enjoy a day of rest,” labor bureau Chief Nicholas Messuri wrote, citing revisions to the state’s so-called Blue Laws as recently as 1994.

“In that most recent revision of the law, the protection for Thanksgiving remained in place.”

Those same laws allow the sale of retail drugs and medicines, so Messuri said Wal-Mart could open its pharmacies and permit employees directly operating them to work.

A company spokesman at Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., said she would have to research the matter before commenting. According to the company’s website, it operates three supercenters, 41 discount stores and four Sam’s Clubs in Massachusetts, employing 11,360 people.

Last week, Reilly’s office also told the Whole Foods supermarkets chain it could not stay open on Thanksgiving after a competitor complained.

AP-ES-11-22-05 1737EST