This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated October 18, 2024
Columbus Day remains one of eleven official federal holidays, but its official status as a holiday from state to state has been changing rapidly as it has been disappearing. Only 16 states still observe the second Monday in October as an official public holiday exclusively called Columbus Day. Four states mark the day as both Columbus Day and something else, while four other states and the District of Columbia mark the day as an official public holiday by a different name. In the other 26 states, there is no holiday at all.
As of this year, about 200 U.S. cities no longer celebrate a holiday by the name of Columbus Day. Even the most populous American city named after the explorer, Columbus, Ohio, no longer observes the holiday of its namesake, opting instead for Indigenous Peoples’ Day as of 2020. The states and cities that have chosen to no longer honor Christopher Columbus with a holiday are a mix of both red and blue, showing that this is not a decision unique to one political side.
“The vast majority of Italian Americans use this holiday to celebrate the contributions of Italians, not to venerate any one person and certainly not to venerate violence towards Indigenous peoples.”
Councilman Justin Brannan on October 12, 2024 responding to the Council’s Italian American Caucus removing him for what he referred to as not abiding by new bylaws that require “pledging fealty to Christopher Columbus”
Since 2021, the New York City Department of Education has officially observed the second Monday in October as a school holiday by the name of Italian Heritage Day/Indigenous People’s Day. This trend has been growing and it will continue to do so, for good reason.
Columbus did not find a new land; Indigenous people had lived here for eons. He did not discover the America of today’s United States; he colonized part of the Caribbean. He did not represent Italy; he was born in the city-state of Genoa centuries before a unified Italian nation existed and he sailed for Spain, a country that eventually imprisoned him because of how sadistic he was.
Columbus sold girls as young as nine-years-old into sex slavery, cut out people’s tongues, fed babies to dogs, and began a genocide that wiped out three million Indigenous people within 50 years. Maintaining a holiday in his honor because it is what we grew up with, based on a mythologized fairytale that baby boomers and Gen-Xers were taught, is not a valid justification. In this era, from Lance Armstrong to Bill Cosby, we have learned how to move on from popular figures after learning who they truly are, so doing the same with Columbus should not be difficult.
Columbus Day was first celebrated in 1792 in our new nation to honor the 300th anniversary of his discovery of America, even though he did not do that. It reemerged again on the 400th anniversary in 1892. For over a century, it had no connection to Italian heritage, but in the early 1900s, the Knights of Columbus lobbied state legislatures to adopt it as a holiday. Italian immigrants facing xenophobic hatred, saw that by connecting themselves with Columbus, they were joining their heritage with someone who was, at the time, inextricably linked to the idea of America even being possible.
From the 1930s, states slowly adopted Columbus Day as a holiday, always being held on October 12, no matter what day of the week that fell on, and never being a day off from school or work. It was not until 1971 that the second Monday in October was designated as a federal holiday for Columbus Day, with no official recognition of Italian heritage.
Columbus Day has changed plenty over the years already and it has always been based on an inaccurate history of a genocidal monster who did not discover what is now America. The discussion about when and how to honor Indigenous People and celebrate Italian American heritage is important, and we do not need to cancel one to have the other. We do, however, need to stop honoring Columbus.
No other nationality has a federal holiday, a New York holiday or a New York City school holiday on a weekday. The intention of Columbus Day was not to celebrate Italian heritage, but to honor a man for whom it has been well-established, is worthy of ignominy, not idolization. Simply removing his name and celebrating Italian Heritage Day on an October Sunday would not take anything away from anyone, but instead treat it the same as holidays for other nationalities.
Even as Indigenous People’s Day is taking over as the official name for this day, more discussion is devoted to the Columbus debate, which is more of a reason for there to be a dedicated day, not shared, that focuses solely on Indigenous people, where they are recognized on the holiday originally named for a man who brutalized Indigenous people.
