Columbus Isn’t Even His Real Name. There’s a tendency in American society to “Anglicize” names from other cultures. This was especially true in the case of Christopher Columbus whose birth name was most likely Cristoforo Colombo back in Genoa Italy. (If Columbus Day is meant to be a day of Italian-American pride, we could at least use his Italian name.) But that’s not the only other name Columbus is known by. During his expeditions to the Americas he was known as Cristóbal Colón (or sometimes Cristóval, which would have been pronounced the same), which was the Spanish spelling and pronunciation of his Italian name.
The least we could do if we are going to keep celebrating Columbus Day is to change it to Colón Day. At least that’s a better reflection of who the guy was when he was wandering around the Caribbean and grossly misgoverning Spain’s American colonies.
The Second Monday of October is a Stupid Day for a Holiday. America does not have very many national holidays, and out of the ones we have only a select few are truly celebrated nationally. (I’d argue that only Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Memorial Day, The Fourth of July, and Labor Day are truly national holidays, and becoming less so all the time. Most people still go to work on Martin Luther King Jr Day and President’s Day, which is something of a travesty.) Many of our holidays mark the changing of the seasons. Memorial Day is the start of Summer, Labor Day the end. Christmas is a Midwinter celebration while the Fourth of July honors Summer at its height. The second Monday in October marks nothing.
Most American holidays celebrate actual Americans, American cultural, or American ideals. We honor Martin Luther King Jr because he was a great man abd our Presidents because they shaped this country. Memorial Day honors those who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedoms and way of life. Christmas is a cultural holiday that also celebrates our ancient pagan and Christian roots. Thanksgiving is a harvest festival with some mythology added. Christopher Columbus never set foot in what is now the United States, at least Santa Claus visits once a year.
Sure, October is one of the best months of the year, but it’s one of the best months of the year because of Halloween, homecomings, apples, and pumpkins. The second Monday of October doesn’t ring in any of that stuff. We’d be much better off replacing Columbus Day with a Native Americans Day sometime in the Spring (a Native American holiday should be clear of Columbus’s stink). How about getting rid of Columbus Day and making Election Day a national holiday to make voting easier? I’d also be cool with making Halloween (or the day after) a national holiday, most of us celebrate it already, right?
I don’t know anyone with deep feelings about Columbus Day, and at this point in my life the only person I know who “celebrates” the holiday is my postlady who I hope enjoys a good day off next Monday. I have fond memories for just about every holiday celebrated in the United States, but nothing for Columbus Day. It’s time to move on.
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1. Numbers taken from Michael Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, which is simply one of my favorite books ever. Read this. There are disagreements on just how many people lived in the Americas when Columbus landed. Some scholars put the number as low as 40 million people, but I’m a believer in the higher count. The more we push into the archeological record the more people are discovered to have lived in the Americas.
2. See Anders Winroth’s The Age of the Vikings, pages 60-63. Great book, and one of my favorites from last year.
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