Let’s start with the general principle that “bank holidays” in which government employees and schoolteachers have the day off, but pretty much no one else, are a stinky arrangement to begin with. Yes, I say that largely as a parent who has dealt with many Mondays of trying to manage a day off school when I can’t necessarily take the day off work (though today, at least, my husband and I did both take the day off and spend a family day with the kids). But still: there’d be a pretty darn good reason for the three non-holiday holidays of Presidents’ Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and Columbus Day, to be worth the inconvenience of everyone else and the expense to the government.
The most traditional of these is Presidents’ Day, though its current incarnation, in which it’s moved, in the general understanding, from a day to honor President Washington and President Lincoln for their extraordinary place in the history of our country, to a day to honor all presidents generically, has gotten a bit foolish. Look, folks, not all presidents are deserving of this quasi-sainthood. Just because a man has managed, by a mix of luck of birth and political acumen, to achieve election to the presidency, does not mean he is particularly worthy, in terms of his achievements or the general honorableness of his actions.
As for Martin Luther King, Jr., I’m again squeamish about elevating this one man to the secular American sainthood of a holiday. Was his role in the Civil Rights Movement so singular? Maybe, maybe to the extent that this day becomes a day to commemorate this movement in general, and the principle of equal rights under the law, there may be a reasonable basis for this holiday – though I still don’t see a reason why we as a nation need to prove our dedication to equality by means of granting a holiday to government workers.
And Columbus Day – eeesh. We know that the holiday was established not because he was a such a worthy man but because it was a way of the Italians marking their political “arrival” and integration into the political realm. We know that he is not a man deserving of a great honor due to either great skill or leadership or due to his exceptionally morally worthy behavior – he did not believe the world was round when everyone else thought it was flat; everyone knew the world was round but believed (correctly) that the distance across the ocean was insurmountable and Columbus thought otherwise because his math was wrong. And you’ve got to be living under a rock if you believe his actions in the New World were particularly saintly – sure, behavior such as massacring and enslaving large numbers of people was pretty much par for the course at the time, but it was nonetheless even then considered a “fact of life” at best (and even then, Columbus was removed from his post for his tyrannical behavior), but not a path towards holiness.
So if the holiday isn’t about honoring Columbus, what’s the point? Look, you could make the argument that Columbus exemplifies the American ideals of daring and courage, even if he didn’t live up to those ideals himself, or is a representative of the explorers, and the spirit of exploration in general. Perhaps we should just commemorate the First Contact and acknowledge that it was a pivotal event that had an extraordinary impact, and is, in a way, the “birthday” of the New World as we know it today. After all, we know that the Vikings “discovered” North America first, but had no permanent impact. And we celebrate birthdays, without requiring that the individual in question be especially worthy.
Or we on the center-right, who would probably be perfectly happy to have one less irrelevant government holiday, could make common cause with those who object to Columbus Day due to the unworthiness of the man himself, and just eliminate it altogether.
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