It’s Columbus Day again and the argument of exactly who Columbus was and if he deserves his own holiday is officially renewed.

Historians have discovered quite a bit of their own new world lately by finding out who “discovered” this continent well before Columbus ever landed and have outlined much more detail of Columbus’ actions in the “New World”.

Americans celebrate holidays named for a variety of historical figures, and none of them were perfect. However, it seems that glare of history’s magnifying glass has so far been reserved for Columbus.

If the subject of every holiday that we celebrate in this country were put to the same historical and political microscope that Columbus Day has been under, very few would still be embraced the same way they have always been.

Take Thanksgiving for example. A holiday based on the historical premise that pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution, were given food and the means of survival by Native Americans. That’s the story we all learned in grade school, right?

But have you ever noticed that we never hear about what happens to those same Native Americans after the Thanksgiving meal? It cannot have ended well for them. Did this not trigger the persecution of Native Americans in the Northeast? Yet, Thanksgiving gets a pass, for now.

I believe the celebration of Columbus Day in the United States is less about the man and more about his heritage.

Italian Americans, and some banks, are about the only folks who celebrate Columbus Day anymore. For most Italians, celebrating Columbus Day is not so much about Columbus, but more about the other countless Italians who have contributed to American history.

I know for me personally, I don’t think of Columbus as a great Italian hero. When I think of Italian heroes, I think of Fermi, Marconi and Vespucci. But while I don’t think of Columbus as a hero, I also don’t think that the name of the holiday needs to be changed. 

Think of it this way. St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated as an Irish holiday. We don’t celebrate the man, we all drink green beer and eat corned beef and cabbage and we’re all Irish for one day. But what if in a few years, historians found that way back in the 300’s, the time of St. Patrick, that he not only drove out snakes, but that he also violently drove out heretics and inadvertently began an age of persecution of druids? (I know that’s not what happened, but humor me.)

Would there be a movement to change the name of the holiday because of what the one man did or an era he may have begun? And how exactly would the Irish-American community react to that movement?

If we want to go back and change names of holidays because of newly discovered history, that’s fine. But let’s remind ourselves of two very important things.

One, we rarely celebrate the namesakes of holidays anymore. If that was true, we wouldn’t have big sales on towels to celebrate President’s Day.

Two, once we accept the results of history’s magnifying glass on one of our holidays, we better be ready to hear the bad news about all of our “heroes”. If we are going to be honest, very few, if any, of our holidays will survive the glare.