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Should We Still Celebrate Columbus Day?

by Frank Liao | October 9, 2009 at 01:46 pm

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Columbus Day is fast approaching and to most Americans, except for those living in Hawaii, it's just another statutory holiday that entitles them to a day off from work. Most Americans learn at some point in their lives that Christopher Columbus didn't actually discover America and so to celebrate a holiday for him is rather insincere.

However, despite the fraudulent nature of Columbus Day, I don't think most Americans would want to just cancel the holiday because that would mean one more day of work or one more day of school.

A good solution to this problem is to just copy the State of Hawaii and call it Discovery Day. In Hawaii, Columbus Day is not recognized as an official holiday. Instead, they have a day called Discovery Day, commemorating the Polynesian discovery of Hawaii.

Making changes to the Columbus Day holiday should not be sacrilegious. Columbus Day did not become a federal holiday until 1970. To put that in perspective, people who are 40 or older today were alive before it became a federal holiday.

Granted, Columbus was not the sole precipitator of the displacement and suffering imposed on native Americans for the next half millennium, and certainly his navigational, scientific, and sheer physical accomplishment, which rank him with or above such figures as Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan, and Lewis and Clark, cannot be denied.

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jakesylvester1

at 14:00 on October 9th, 2009

Everyone loves a holiday (except if you have to work). Keep the holiday; change the name to something based on fact. Perhaps Hawaii's idea would suffice. But don't stop it.

Hugh Askew

at 14:03 on October 9th, 2009

While he didn't actually discover "America", he did indeed, discover the Americas.

In addition, he sold the idea of colonization to the Spaniards, and the rest, as they say, is history.

So, yes, keep the holiday.

Jordan Yerman

at 14:24 on October 9th, 2009

Columbus was actually a few hundred years behind Leif Erikson on the whole North-America thing, though Leif Erikson Day is only 72 hours before Columbus Day.

a211423

at 14:36 on October 9th, 2009

Columbus did not discover The Americas.

In the ground breaking book 1491 Charles Mann reveals "a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques have concluded:

In 1491 there were more people living in the Americas than all of Europe

Cities like Tenochititlan, the Aztec Captital, were not only greater in population but, unlike any capital in Europe at the time, had running water, botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.

The Western Hemisphere was thriving before the Egyptians built the pyramids

Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science described it as man's first "genetic engineering."

Amazonian Indians learn to farm without the rain forest without destroying it

Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscraped" by human beings

Researchers have debated the population of North American since the 19th century, and recent studies have revealed that the Pre-Columbian population of North American was between 90 to 112 million people. It is estimated that within 100 years of Columbus' landing 90% of the population had died from smallpox, diphtheria, measles, typhus and influenza.

Should we celebrate Columbus Day?

Dia de los Muertos seems more appropriate.