Describe the attitude of the townspeople as they go to church in the first paragraph of "The Minister's Black Veil." What does it tell about...

In the beginning of the story, the townspeople seem very carefree and happy.  The narrator says that

Children, with bright faces, tripped merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes.  Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week days.

Young and old move together toward the meeting-house to attend religious services.  Children seem playful...

In the beginning of the story, the townspeople seem very carefree and happy.  The narrator says that

Children, with bright faces, tripped merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes.  Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week days.

Young and old move together toward the meeting-house to attend religious services.  Children seem playful and energetic while young men, all dressed up, make eyes at the lovely young women who seem even lovelier today than usual.  It is hardly the typical Puritan scene.  We often see them as austere and somber, worrying anxiously over the fate of their eternal souls: a fate over which they have no control because God has predetermined which of them will go to heaven.  We never consider the Puritans to be people who are concerned with how well they're dressed or how pretty they are.  Such a carefree scene seems to imply that they really do not take their religious lives as seriously as we tend to believe.  This interpretation is later confirmed by their response to the veil's meaning, a meaning they "darkly understand" and choose to run away from because it is too uncomfortable to think of themselves and their minister as possessing "secret sins" that they feel compelled to hide from the world.