Happy real Columbus Day!
Today, October 12, is traditional Columbus Day. It was 531 years ago today that the Genoese explorer became the first European to set foot in the Western Hemisphere.
No big deal, according to those who want to cancel Christopher Columbus because he violated “norms” that the world wouldn’t discover for another half millennium. The cancelers are sure that, if only they had been around in 1492, they would have known better. No, they wouldn’t have. And they wouldn’t have sailed across the ocean in wooden ships and discovered the New World either.
But more than five centuries later, they’re still trying to discredit that accomplishment because Christopher Columbus lived before the Age of Enlightenment and his attitudes and behaviors comported with those of his 15th century contemporaries. How dare he not share our 21st century values!
But the real reason that Columbus is reviled is because his discovery set in motion events that eventually resulted in the United States of America. To some, that is the most unforgivable sin of all.
That’s what all this anti-Columbus stuff is really about. It’s not about celebrating Indigenous Peoples, Native Americans, First Peoples or whatever term is in vogue this week. It’s about delegitimizing the United States.
The history of human beings on planet earth is the history of exploration and conquest. It hasn’t always been pretty. But only one country is ever held to account for it.
I love Columbus Day because it reminds me of a bygone era before little children were taught that they live on stolen land and are descended from genocidal oppressors. Must do wonders for their social emotional wellness.
The myth that the North American continent was a peaceful paradise populated by native tribes living in harmony before the Europeans arrived is just that – a myth. Warfare between Indian tribes was a way of life in North America long before Columbus arrived. So was human sacrifice and slavery.
“Not all Indians lived in a continual state of intertribal war,” wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison in his Oxford History of the American People, “but war was part of the social pattern. Any Indian group that tried to shift its dominant values from war to peace was doomed to extinction by another.”
That is not to absolve Europeans and their American descendants of all transgressions against Native Americans. But the idea that Europeans introduced brutality to the New World is as much a fairy tale as any fanciful story about the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.
Columbus was from Genoa, in northern Italy. Columbus Day means a lot to Italian-Americans, who, not so very long ago were actually seen as a disadvantaged group that faced real discrimination.
For that reason, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the first federal observance of Columbus Day in 1937 to recognize the contributions of Italian-Americans and to assure them of their rightful place in American history.
“We are celebrating today the exploit of a bold and adventurous Italian,” FDR said, “who with the aid of Spain opened up a new world where freedom, tolerance and respect for human dignity provided a refuge for the oppressed of the Old World.”
Eighty-six years ago, even progressive icons like FDR believed that. Today, those words would be grounds for impeachment.
Legislation to create Columbus Day as an official federal holiday was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on June 28, 1968, to be observed on the second Monday in October beginning in 1971.
But in short order, the revisionist historians began the slow, gradual process that will result in the eventual erasure of Christopher Columbus from all of history. Last year, the Wakefield Public Schools official Calendar changed the holiday to “Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day.” I’m shocked that they gave Columbus top billing.
But old Christopher won’t have to share the spotlight for long. In due course, his name will be removed altogether.
Baby steps.
Like Rome, America wasn’t built in a day. Dismantling her will take time as well. Sadly, that process is well underway.
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[This column originally appeared in the October 12, 2023 Wakefiekd Daily Item.]
Filed under: Columns & Essays, History, Humor, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 3 Comments
Tags: America, cancel culture, Christopher Columbus, Europeans, exploration, FDR, Genoa, History, Humor, Indians, Italians, Italy, LBJ, Mark Sardella, Native Americans, New World, Oct. 12, Opinion, politicsColumbus Day, Samuel Eliot Morison, United States, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA
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Mark Sardella 
Nicely written Mark. Love your analogy that Christopher Columbus should have known about the values and mores of the 21st Century. LOL Great clarification of the dedication of Columbus Day by FDR and his words in justifying the creation of this holiday.
Thank you for that article. I remember my grandfather telling me about the lynching of 11 Italians in New Orleans a few years before he immigrated here in 1900. All were lynched, had their bodies brutalized and later found not guilty of the murder of a police chief. Some, including the Grey Lady, cheered the lynch mob on. He came anyway, knowing American was the land of opportunity for anyone willing to pull up their sleeves and work to the best of their abilities, and not looking for a handout. That was true of most all immigrants in those days.
Mark, Personally, I wouldn’t object to retaining “Columbus Day” as the name of the holiday, and the new name “Indigenous Peoples Day” is inaccurate. The human race is indigenous to Africa but not to the western hemisphere.
But it’s not worth worrying about. I was miffed when Lincoln’s birthday was no longer a holiday of its own. But the country didn’t seem to suffer.
Nor will the country suffer from the change of this holiday’s name.