Indigenous People’s Day. Fuck that other guy.
The fucking liar that knew he wasn’t in India and still called the people Indians? Yeah fuck that fucking guy.
The impact on indigenous people was certainly significant, so that makes sense. However there was also significant impact on European history which would be missing. The advantage of calling it Columbus Day is he was central to all the lasting effects
Fuck him and fuck you.
The 9th day of Halloween. What, y’all don’t celebrate all month long?
All month? This is the 342nd day of Halloween. All days lead to Halloween.
You have my full support.
I call it Columbus Day.
Many people hate this name because they find the character of the man reprehensible. Many also argue that since he wasn’t the first person from the Eastern Hemisphere to come to the Western Hemisphere his name shouldn’t be enshrined in the name of a holiday.
To my knowledge there isn’t a single historically significant person who we today could call a wholly good person. Setting this aside momentarily. Columbus is arguably one of the most significant people in all human history. We describe the Americas before European contact as Pre-Colombian, we could describe the entire world similarly. It would take too long to list all the ways the world is different after Columbus. Just listing the foods would take too long. Just listing the places named after Columbus is exhausting: a country, a Canadian province, two us state capitals, the us capital, the second largest city in Panama, cities/towns/villages all over the Americas and streets, rivers, and lakes as far off as Italy and the Philippines.
Most people know that Brazilians speak a Portuguese dialect while the majority of South and Central America speak a Spanish dialect. This is because in 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral accidentally discovered Brazil while trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope. In some alternate reality there’s a Cabral Day and a pre-Cabralean America and all those placenames are named after Pedro Álvares Cabral.
It isn’t the man that causes me to call it Columbus Day it is the immensity the historical significance that does. The man did some terrible things. Unfortunately, when you study history that’s how it just goes. If you discount every historical person based on whether they meet modern ideals of good and evil then history books will become rather slim. History is full of people who do good things and bad things but they all do significant things.
If you want to call it Indigenous Peoples Day thats great. The same day can have multiple holidays. If you want to call it Columbus Day that’s great too. Let’s just remember that it’s easy to celebrate what we see as good while forgetting what’s uncomfortable and they should go hand in hand.
You’re right, we should judge Columbus based on the times he lived.
Bobadilla reported to Spain that Columbus once punished a man found guilty of stealing corn by having his ears and nose cut off and then selling him into slavery. He claimed that Columbus regularly used torture and mutilation to govern Hispaniola. Testimony recorded in the report stated that Columbus congratulated his brother Bartholomew on “defending the family” when the latter ordered a woman paraded naked through the streets and then had her tongue cut because she had “spoken ill of the admiral and his brothers”. The document also describes how Columbus put down native unrest and revolt: he first ordered a brutal suppression of the uprising in which many natives were killed, and then paraded their dismembered bodies through the streets in an attempt to discourage further rebellion…
In early October 1500, Columbus and Diego presented themselves to Bobadilla, and were put in chains aboard La Gorda, the caravel on which Bobadilla had arrived at Santo Domingo. They were returned to Spain, and languished in jail for six weeks before King Ferdinand ordered their release.
I didn’t say that we should judge him by the standards of his time. I did say that he did terrible things.
I think the point is that even by the standards of his time, he was horrible. And that was an era where a common legal execution method was strapping you to a wagon wheel and beating you to death over the course of an hour. He was horrible compared even to that.
I never made the argument that he wasn’t terrible
I enjoy this nuanced perspective. In light of all that, I will now call this holiday Fuck Columbus Day.
That’s entirely your right
So why can’t we name it America’s day. We just need to stop using people names for shit.
If it’s very important to you then you could get signatures supporting changing the name to America’s Day or you could petition your state or local government. Things can be changed it just needs someone to enact that change.
Another work day that I don’t get off.
Leif Erikson Day - Hinga dinga durgen!
YES, thank you
Why Do I Have To Work Today Day
Indigenous Peoples’ Day
My family celebrates Columbo Day by watching murder mysteries.
No Mail Monday, but I won’t remember until I check it anyways.
Culumbus Day. It doesn’t sit right with me that they took an existing holiday when August doesn’t have one.
Columbus really wasn’t someone worth celebrating
He told Europe that America existed. Thats a massive turning point in history.
They already knew. The Norse found it 500 years before Columbus.
Knew is a strong word
The norse found it but 500 years is a crazy long time, and they didn’t know it wasn’t just a series of arctic islands
I think it’s reasonable to say they knew. They probably didn’t realize how enormous the Americas were. But it was certainly known that some landmass existed west of Greenland. The Norse settled Greenland around year 1000 and allegedly founded colonies in Newfoundland around that time.
It’s more than allegedly. They founded settlements here.
Nice, last I’d heard we were going off of written records. Didn’t know there was physical evidence.
Norse may have been there, but there was no lasting impact. No permanent settlement, no trade, no records other than logs/journals, no memory, no further exploration …. Compare that with the impact of Columbus’ voyage
We actually don’t know how much the Norse may have explored: we have very few records and I believe only one settlement for a couple years.
I find this idea fascinating - they could have ….
As everyone knows, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand asked Columbus to set sail and find chill friends to share treats and peacefully hang.
Everyone kicked it and lived happily ever after.
So was Hitler starting WW2, but no one celebrates “Hitler Day”
We knew the Americas existed long before Hitler told anyone about it.
I thought that was the primary advantage the British gained from cracking enigma- they learned FDR’s phone number from a cracked German transmission.
Isn’t Hitler Day the day he offed himself, though?
What do you think 4/20 is? That’s Hitler’s birthday! /s
Someone can have a big impact on history and not be worth celebrating.
The thing I think about all the time is that I think our holidays should have a point. Labor day celebrates the accomplishments of workers and encourages us to adopt their best traits: industriousness, teamwork, determination.
Independence Day is supposed to inspire us to be grateful for the courage showed by the founders who seceded from Great Britain, and model their (supposed) virtues, such as liberty.
Thanksgiving is supposed to celebrate harvests, gratitude, the kindness of strangers, etc. There are certainly problems with the history it exhalts, but it makes sense.
Juneteenth is a celebration of diversity, the achievements of black Americans and of abolitionists, Memorial day is about military valor and sacrifice, etc.
Columbus Day just makes no sense. Even if we ignore that Columbus was a monstrous person hated even by his peers,… what exactly is the point of the holiday? Columbus isn’t known for any particular virtue at all, and the discovery of inhabited Caribbean islands by a Spanish-financed Italian explorer has no clear meaning for us as Americans. It barely has anything to do with us.
He told Europe that he had found a route to India, but something seemed off….
Amerigo Vespucci told Europe it was a new continent.
So you’d prefer to remember both the colonizer and the people who were massacred by colonization?
Weird take, but ok.
I mean…that sounds like a good idea.
Celebrating both sounds like a bad idea.
We can’t help but remember both. Not repeating history, not so much.
They took a holiday about an Italian who had nothing to do with the US much like that man took indigenous people prisoners? That’s what didn’t sit right with you? So weird to think an Italian funded by the Spanish was somehow important enough to a country that didn’t exist for another 300 years that the government made it a federal holiday.
More time passed between him erroneously finding the Americas and the signing of the Declaration of Independence than the US has even been around.
I call it “oh shit, is it a holiday today?”
For me it’s “Sometimes day off” day, if it’s not a major holiday, idrc what day it is only if I get a day off or not lmao
I call it get me the fuck off work day
October 9th. Seemingly nothing really closes for that day, I know it’s technically a banking holiday but that doesn’t ever seem to matter to me.
Banking, school, government holiday but I rarely get it off (I do this year). I rarely go to a bank, so not likely to affect me (does anyone else remember when banks would close web sites for holidays?)
I got my kid home from school, which is nice, but his coach just called for an extra practice so we can’t do anything
I looked it up and there are about 20 holidays on that day.
