Holiday?

Columbus Day doesn’t mean much to most Americans

No need to wait for the mail to be delivered today. It’s not coming. Any business with another federal agency will have to wait until Tuesday as well.

And you might want to skip that trip to the bank, unless you can do your business over the ATM. Most of them will be closed or offering limited services.

Wondering why?

Well, today is Columbus Day, a federal holiday that most places—and most people—no longer pay a lot of attention to. We imagine some younger folks may never even have heard of such a holiday. At one time it was common for schools to let students off for the day, but that’s increasingly rare.

Columbus Day celebrates the arrival of Christopher Columbus and his crew to these shores. There are still cities such as New York with large numbers of Italian-Americans—who embrace the day as one to celebrate their national heritage, similar to Irish-Americans and St. Patrick’s Day—that hold parades, but in the rest of the country there are few formal observances of the holiday these days.

About the only time anyone shows any interest in Columbus Day is to protest celebrating the explorer’s arrival. Native American groups and allied scholars argue that Columbus wasn’t anyone’s idea of a hero. They say he was nothing but a pirate whose soul aim was to loot and plunder in the name of the Spanish crown, gaining wealth and position for himself in the process. They blame him for bringing disease, slavery and brutality to this part of the world.

There are merits to the argument. And a lot of truth. But there’s fault in every American hero when we judge those who lived in years past by today’s moral and ethical standards.

What is indisputable is that without Columbus’ journeys to this part of the world, history would not have unfolded exactly as it did. And that could well mean that the U.S. as we know it might not exist today.

So celebrate if you want to, don’t bother if you don’t. Because truth be told, it doesn’t really matter all that much anymore. Columbus Day could disappear next year and we doubt anyone outside the few workers who still get the day off would notice.