Columbus Day and Alternative Holidays

At this time of year in this country, and especially during the 21st century, there always seems to be a debate over what and who we should celebrate. Is it Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day? What are we celebrating if it is Columbus Day? This debate can be demonstrated by how, as of 2025, there's a variety of names for the day or varying degrees by which it is celebrated. In my experience living in Minnesota and both Dakotas, each has its different customs. Growing up in Minnesota, it was Columbus Day, but now it's Indigenous Peoples Day, and the Columbus statue near the Minnesota State Capitol was removed. In North Dakota, Columbus Day is still observed as such. In South Dakota, it's been Native American Day since 1990.

My photo from 2012 of the Columbus statue which used to stand near the Minnesota State Capitol before vandals tore it down in 2020.

Before I get into the debate itself, it's interesting to see how each centennial of the landing of Columbus in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492 - generally considered the "Discovery of the Americas" or at least the beginning of a permanent link between America and Europe - has been marked. The author of the book Columbus and the Crisis of the West does the same. Beginning with 1592, it seems that there was little celebration. Columbus was controversial even in his lifetime, being removed as governor of the Indies by the Spanish Crown. 1692 also seems to have gone generally without notice. There may have been other factors involved in why the Spanish Empire itself didn't really celebrate Columbus Day. Perhaps, as an officially Catholic culture, Spain and its colonies weren't interested in celebrating a worldly event. Holidays were still Holy-days, and I can't think of a Spanish holiday from the 16th or 17th centuries that was not a religious one.

The United States, however, did things differently. As a new country straight out of the Enlightenment and also influenced by Protestantism, religious holidays had less weight, and secular holidays became more appealing. As the first country in America to gain independence from its mother country overseas, the United States took advantage of this fact by not only calling itself "America" but also informally "Columbia" in honor of the man and event that ultimately led to the establishment of an American country with European ideas. Therefore, by the time 1792 came around, a society in New York City celebrated the 300th anniversary of Columbus' landing. In 1892, there was even more excitement amid the American industrial optimism common in American culture at the time. Columbus' landing 400 years before was seen as a triumph of human bravery, technology, and even science. It was around this time that people still believed the myth of Columbus proving that the Earth is round to the scoffing Catholic elite of Spain. Anyway, as part of that association of Columbus with industrial optimism, the World's Columbian Exposition happened in Chicago the following year, 1893. By this point and afterward, it seems that the world noticed and often followed the U.S. treatment of Columbus. Now that Spain's American colonies were all independent republics, various countries in the Americas reflected on the significance of Columbus in a positive, neutral, or negative light. Spain itself, which was slowly secularizing, started to celebrate Columbus Day as the "Day of the Race", a recognition of the spread of Spanish culture and its union with Native American cultures into what Americans often call Hispanics or Latinos. Italy, too, recognizing Columbus as a native of that country, has celebrated Columbus, but not as much as the Italian Americans, who have chosen that day to celebrate their own community and were a large factor in making Columbus Day become a federal holiday.

The commemorative Half Dollar produced in 1892/3 for the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing

By 1992, American culture was very different. Unlike in 1892, when Indian reservations and Native American rights could be taken away on a whim, the culture of the United States, having went through the civil rights movement three or so decades earlier, had equality in mind and started to question the celebration of Columbus' landing. Americans started to have more interest in the Native Americans' perspective and started to see Columbus in a less than positive way. Howard Zinn, for example, portrayed Christopher Columbus as a villain in his 1980 book, People's History of the United States. Nevertheless, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landing was generally celebrated. The U.S. Mint created three different commemorative coins for the occasion. My favorite has a design split into two halves: the Santa Maria on the left (the ship of 1492) and the Space Shuttle on the right (the "ship" of 1992). Also, Pope St. John Paul II marked the occasion by visiting the Dominican Republic, one of the first countries visited by Columbus, but more so celebrated it as the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Christian evangelization of the Americas.

The reverse of the commemorative dollar coin made for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landing

From 1992 onward, the debate over Columbus Day has been a major talking point in American culture wars. Some, mostly conservatives, still celebrate Columbus Day for the first voyage of Columbus. Others, mostly liberals, celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day for the people who have lived in the Americas for countless millennia. I say there are good reasons to celebrate both. I'll start with the reasons why Columbus Day is good to celebrate, and then the reasons why Indigenous Peoples' Day is good to celebrate.

Columbus Day commemorates a very significant event in world history. Although Columbus didn't actually set foot on the American mainland on October 12, 1492, he did on a later voyage, and in any case, his first voyage set of explorations that would permanently unite the Americas on one side and Europe and Africa on the other. This brought about both good and bad things. Sure, Columbus may have had a mind for exploitation, and European diseases and conquests severely damaged the native population, but it also introduced horses, metallurgy, guns, and many other things the native tribes of the interior of North America especially wanted to have. The Europeans, meanwhile, were introduced to some very good crops such as cacao, tomatoes, squash, green beans, and maize (which became so widely grown that an old word for grain, "corn", began to refer to just maize). There is much debate over the character of Columbus himself, but I would say that Columbus Day should be celebrated for the permanent link across the ocean if not for the man who led the voyage that made that happen.

The spread of guns and horses across North America. Although Europeans brought them first, Native Americans were eager to gain the two through intertribal trade or spoils of war.

Indigenous Peoples' Day honors the history and many cultures of the people who first discovered America many millennia ago and have been there ever since. The celebration of these cultures and what they have given the world can also be celebrated as part of that holiday. It is also fitting to celebrate it on the same day others celebrate Columbus Day since this was when Native Americans were introduced to Europeans. For all we know, the first people ever to see America may have done so on an October 12th deep in prehistory.

In conclusion, I will celebrate October 12 or the second Monday in October as Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day to commemorate the exchange of cultures that happened on October 12, 1492 and onward. Since I respect both versions of the holiday, I think that whoever belittles either Native Americans or Columbus and other Europeans is being unreasonable, because a good look at the history of the Americas reveals lots of good and bad results from that fateful event - which is not surprising since any aspect of history as broad as American history is going to have a mix of good and bad events resulting from the actions of good and bad people.

My Thoughts on the Government Shutdown

Well, this sucks.

As I write this, the federal government is on its 5th day of being shut down, and there's guaranteed to be another tomorrow, and after that, who knows. This is the fourth time I've seen a federal shutdown during my lifetime, but only the first I've experienced as a federal employee. I frankly didn't think there was going to be a shutdown last week, since the CR the House of Representatives proposed was the same that got passed in March. What changed? There are a few guesses as to what changed that made the government shut down this time, and both sides of the political aisle are (unsurprisingly) pointing fingers at each other. There is one that seems reasonable but still doesn't explain some details, and it has something to do with Chuck Schumer.

I remember that during the last shutdown scare, back in March, Chuck Schumer decided on the day before the shutdown would have begun to support the CR to fund the government through September, arguing it was better to fund the government so that Trump's agenda could be restricted by federal courts, rather than have a shutdown and let Trump lay off federal workers scot-free. That inspired enough Democrats to support the CR, but not every Democrat agreed. In fact, Schumer was criticized by many Democrats, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, "AOC", who was encouraged to run for Schumer's Senate seat in 2028. It's still unknown whether she really plans to do so, but it's certainly possible. Either way, many believe that Schumer is now trying to prevent that kind of defeat by voting against the CR this time and advocating for other Democrats to do the same. Come to think of it, if I remembered that bit of drama from March, a shutdown now wouldn't have surprised me.

Here's the strange thing about the Democrats allowing this shutdown. Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said at the start of the shutdown that mass layoffs of federal workers could start as early as the weekend. If federal layoffs upset the Democrats when they happened in February, and have worried them ever since, wouldn't they want to prevent the shutdown in that case, or at least end the shutdown before the layoffs happen? So far, the threatened shutdown layoffs haven't happened, but they easily could tomorrow. Hopefully, the nay-voters will see what kind of a dangerous game they're playing and change their minds, unless they want to see federal layoffs happen so they can complain about it for political gain. If that's really the case, though, that Democrats want more layoffs to happen so they can continue griping about the Trump administration, that would be "down-to-the-marrow-of-the-bone stupid", as one senator likes to say.

I will say that regardless of whose fault it might be that the government has shut down, it's really the fault of both sides for not talking it out sooner. I hate how Congress has been waiting until the last week or even the last day before a budget deadline to come up with a deal for new funding. If Congress would meet over a month before these deadlines hit, so that they pass new funding legislation well in advance of the deadline, it would save a lot of nervousness and uncertainty for the federal agencies that receive federal funding. Laziness should have no place in the federal government.