Celebrating Columbus Day?

My friend Tito posted an interesting historical blurb regarding Columbus Day on Facebook the other day.

And it got me thinking about something I never really thought about before—why and when did we start celebrating the holiday? Because as a New Yorker and a person of Italian descent I always just thought Columbus Day was created to compete with Saint Patrick’s Day and to give kids another day off from school in the month of October.

And so I decided to do some light research. As it turns out Columbus Day has been celebrated for centuries throughout Europe. It only became a federal holiday here in 1934.

Who knew?

But it also turns out that Columbus—for lack of a better word---was not all that altruistic. He kind of was a word that rhymes with the word “stick”. And the slavery and genocide of the indigenous people—particularly in Central and South America---which was the direct result of exploration---maybe isn’t all that laudable. Furthermore the fact that the Catholic Church indirectly had a hand in all of this has made me wonder why I ever chose to go down this road of inquiry at all.

I was a lot happier relating Columbus Day to annual winter coat and boot sales at the department stores.

  

And while they say the truth can set you free---sometimes, not so much. I am not sure that if the Knights of Columbus really understood the truth about their role model they would be all that okay with it.

Because Christopher Columbus ain’t  no Saint Patrick. And Leif Ericson discovered the Americas. So maybe the better day for little kids to be off from school in the month of October is Halloween.