On Columbus Day
A brief defense of a quintessentially American holiday.
Columbus Day has largely been a minor national holiday with deep local roots since it was federally recognized in 1971. It was first celebrated long before that, however. Starting off in New York City in 1792 as a commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, the holiday has kept this identity over the centuries but has also been adopted as a celebration of Italian-American heritage. Most people think of it as the one day off from school in October before the deluge of holidays in November and December. Recently, it has gained in prominence – or infamy – due to a progressive crusade to label Columbus a genocidaire and to rechristen the holiday as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. These campaigners accuse Columbus of perpetuating a deliberate genocide of native peoples and label the European interaction with the New World as irredeemably bad. This activist campaign has gained ground over the past decade and several states have officially changed their calendars accordingly. As useful and proper as it is to memorialize the contributions of Native Americans to the United States, the defenestration of Columbus Day is a terrible mistake. In many ways, Columbus Day is itself a perfect encapsulation of our amazing country and its evolution over the centuries into a “more perfect union.”
Before discussing the uniquely American character of Columbus Day, it is necessary to combat some of the more spurious historical arguments used to denigrate Columbus and European involvement in the Americas as a whole. The biggest claim that often comes up in negative portrayals of Columbus and European settlers is that they intended to carry out mass genocide on the peoples of the Americas so as to render their lands open for colonization and exploitation. These supposedly nefarious intentions are applied to any and all European impacts on the New World, from the Catholic missions to biological exchange and trade patterns. In this progressive fantasy world, indigenous Americans were living in a blissful Edenic paradise until they were purposefully destroyed root & branch by evil and greedy Europeans. I don’t have the space to fully debunk the “noble savage” mythos which is so popular on the left these days, but suffice it to say that Native societies weren’t exactly peaceful utopias; recent archaeological discoveries have conclusively proved that fact – and have lent new credibility to the primary source narratives written by European explorers & settlers.
In the same vein, Europeans who came to the Americas were not, by and large, the monsters they are often portrayed as. None of the early European explorers were intentionally trying to wipe out indigenous populations, yet upwards of 90% of those Natives who died in the decades after European contact were victims of diseases like smallpox. At the time, Europeans – likely the most scientifically advanced societies on Earth – had no idea about germs and the mechanics of disease spread. (As we saw over the past few years, modern societies aren’t great at epidemic control either.) There is certainly no way that they were knowledgeable enough to purposefully spread deadly diseases that Natives had no natural immunity for. Seeing the unfortunate mass death of American Indians from European diseases as an intentional conspiracy is both paranoid nonsense and presentism in action.
Similarly, the description of European treatment of Natives as especially brutal and destructive is ahistorical in the extreme. It takes a significant lack of knowledge of contemporary global conditions to make such a farcical statement. The early 1500s saw brutal wars of destruction in Europe and Asia, often with no quarter given and entire populations slaughtered or enslaved. The atrocities visited on Native Americans was, unfortunately, par for the course; but they would have known this themselves given the horrors of their own wars to that point, which wiped out entire tribes and civilizations. As I’ve written in the past, the key question to ask here is “compared to what?” If your answer is either a comparison to a theoretical utopia or the present day, you’re doing history wrong.
Besides the inaccuracies and ill-intentions of the activist push against Columbus Day, the holiday should remain a nationally recognized one because it is a truly American celebration. Our culture has never been a totally stable, unchanging one; we’ve shifted and progressed over the centuries to build the recognizable American culture of today. A big part of that cultural shifting and adaptation has been the influence of mass immigration from across the world. Columbus Day celebrates that uniquely American form of syncretism, where we blend vastly different global perspectives and cultures into one national whole. It is specifically a commemoration of the impact of Italian immigration to the United States, but it need not be so limited. American culture has always been diverse, even when our population has been racially similar; early American settlers had a wide variation in lifestyles, language, religion, food, and family structure. Those differences were consciously understood, merged together, and yet also kept securely apart, by the founders of our country who framed not only our government structures but the very idea of what it meant to be American.
America is not and has never been a homogenous nation, and our diverse roots and backgrounds have greatly contributed to our national strength. Each subsequent wave of immigration made our nation better, from the Irish and German immigrants who bravely fought for the Union they had recently made home, to the later waves of European migrants who transformed America into a dynamic global economy, to the Asian immigrants of the post-war period whose entrepreneurial spirit and drive for excellence have led the way to our prosperous present. Of course, that also includes those who came here through no desire of their own – African slaves – who have not only contributed to American progress, but have radically redefined American culture and made it the model for the world. The best part of American culture is how we mash up so many distinct and different cultures into a cohesive whole wherein one can still make out the constituent parts.
More than anything else, Columbus Day is a celebration of that unique American-ness that makes us so exceptional and different from the other nations of the world. In an era that is hyperconscious of diversity – for good and (mostly) for ill – it is stunning that Columbus Day is being thrown by the wayside. Instead, we should embrace it as a holiday which truly celebrates our syncretic culture and make it an even more important occasion than it currently is. Missing this opportunity to double down on redefining our history versus trashing it entirely would be a profound error.
We mustn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, but keep the baby safe while refreshing the water around it. Like Columbus himself – a Genoan sailor who served the Spanish crown – the holiday has had multiple lives. Columbus Day started out as a memorialization of the first European exploration of the Americas, was broadened to become a commemoration of Italian-American heritage, and should now be seen as a celebration of our national cultural diversity. After all, what’s more American than adaptation?
See you are still doing history wrong. Columbus wasn’t first – the Vikings were (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58996186). So celebrating him as “First” is just wrong factually.
That aside – why should Italian Americans get a federal holiday and not German Americans, or Cajun French Americans … or Native Americans? Italians definitely contributed to our national tapestry, but they aren’t head and shoulders above the rest.
And about that genocide? No, Columbus didn’t start out get every Tribe and Nation killed, but he was dispatched by the Spanish Crown for reasons of trade and economic conquest. The Conquistadores who followed him were even more focused on securing and exporting resources back to Spain. They were given clear orders by the Crown to not allow any interference from anyone – the Dutch, the French or local tribes. When necessary they were brutally efficient at that, and exacerbated the tribal hostilities you report on to make that happen.
Even if we jettison all that, why dump on the Nations who were here before we were? Why deny them their rightful place in America’s “tapestry”? And why use their own history against them while ignoring the suffering we as a nation have inflicted on them? That’s not a full historical analysis – that’s a political screed. And while you have every right to screed away – clothing that in “history” is an affront to historians.Report
Your last paragraph is where I think the activism becomes misguided. I’d say there’s a fair comparison of the federal government adding Juneteenth as a holiday (a positive thing) versus crusades to get rid of statues of Thomas Jefferson (a profoundly nihilistic and destructive thing). To the extent they want to be Native Americans should be added and welcomed to the tapestry of the national fabric. Given the way tribal sovereignty works I’m not always sure they exactly want to be but the door should be open and we as a culture should be accomodating to it. But it doesn’t have to be some zero-sum game that tears out something else in the process.
With the broader assimilation of Italians and Catholics more generally I think the constituency for Columbus day is probably mostly dwindled away. That doesn’t mean we need to engage in this bizarre revionism either, as if Catholics who still gather at a Knights of Columbus are actually in some way celebrating destruction of Native Americans because the Irish immigrants named their group after another Catholic important to European settlement of the Americas. It’s the same silliness we’ll have in a month and a half when we get a bunch of self-righteous nonsense based on the assertion that Americans carving up turkeys and watching football is really a sick, twisted celebration of the particulars of what happened in Massachusetts in the 1620s.Report
Well it is a particularly twisted way to celebrate the colonists surviving conditions they didn’t expect, because of the benevolance of a Native American Nation whom white settlers would eventually chase away by force.
Members of those nations have proudly served us in our military, and now hold high cabinet offices in our government. so they very much want to be involved. They spent 100 plus years signing treaties with the US – only to see those treaties abrogated anytime their land – and its natural resources – became the interest of Americans of European descent. And in the modern era, Native Americans have higher poverty rates then any other minority, lower homeownership rates, lower incomes and vastly less familial wealth then any other ethnic group. So its not that we need to be “accommodating” its that we need to reverse trends and status inflicted on purpose by the US government on these proud independent nations within our midst.
https://ncrc.org/racial-wealth-snapshot-native-americans/Report
“See you are still doing history wrong. Columbus wasn’t first – the Vikings were”
Yeah, but no one KNEW they did. There is also some evidence that the Han Chinese may have made it to the west coast of the Americas. Besides, do you really expect, assuming that the Spanish did know of the Viking arrival, that they would bow out of any “we were first” claims? Hell no. Claim belongs to who can back it up and has the political/military might to ensure that claim. The Vikings wouldn’t have stood a chance, and they were gone from the Americas for as much as 400 years before the Spanish arrived.
Additionally, there is some evidence, which I saw years ago, that the existing tribes that were found in the continental US MAY not have been descendants of first the actual group or groups that did arrive first, so even the claims by the first nations is also suspect.Report
There was a funny story yesterday talking about Philadelphia covering its statue of Columbus with a plywood box.
Well, some “activists” have painted the box the colors of the Italian flag.
It contained an interesting paragraph:
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Sounds like those uppity guidos need to learn their place.Report
What’s interesting about the essay is that it offers no affirmative reason why Columbus, of all the European explorers, is deserving of a holiday. Plenty of tepid defenses (Columbus! Not nearly as bad as some others!).
But what is being offered, is an affirmative proposal that a day be set aside to honor immigration and multiculturalism generally.Report
If indeed that’s the proposal, then yes, lets honor that – but we don’t need his name on there to do so.Report
As I understand it, the six most common workday holidays in the US are: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. (Easter is often a day off, but since it falls on a Sunday it’s not typically counted by people who make these kinds of lists.) The seventh most common workday holiday is Black Friday.Report
It sure is weird to talk about how we should have a day honoring Columbus without really talking about, uh, actual Columbus.
This is because it is basically impossible to argue we should honor Columbus, who was a) an idiot who thought the world was much smaller than the commonly accepted and correct size, b) someone too dumb to figure out that it wasn’t, and c) such a complete manic that his own people said ‘WTF?’
Oh, look, you did mention him, but only to misstate a legitimate complaint about hm, glue it to some _other_ complaint that is maybe more defensible, and defend that other complaint instead.
Columbus, again, was a violent religious lunatic (and also not particularly bright) who was extremely bad at literally everything he did. What he did reads as a comedy of errors. Whatever we think about European interaction with the Americans (and I almost completely disagree with this post) is irrelevant…Columbus Day does not honor ‘Europea interacting with America’, it honors an actual literal man with a specific history.
Incidentally, it sure is weird when defending _Confederate_ generals it’s ‘Yes, what he defended was not good, but he was a personally honorable man’. Whereas with Columbus people are suddenly trying to defend…um…colonialism, which sounds absurd, but it’s somehow easier than defending the actual person, who is an incredibly crappy person _even in the context_ of the time period he lived in.Report
This would be the Columbus who was arrested and sent back to Spain for his cruel atrocities as governor? That’s who we celebrate?
The Columbus who proudly talked about sexual trafficking of children in his own journals? THAT Columbus?
What’s there to celebrate? The man was evil by any standard.Report
This should be required reading in all high schools.Report