Many Italian-Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage, the first occasion being in New York City on October 12, 1866.[4] Columbus Day was first enshrined as a legal holiday in the United States through the lobbying of Angelo Noce, a first generation Italian, in Denver. The first statewide Columbus Day holiday was proclaimed by Colorado governor Jesse F. McDonald in 1905, and it was made a statutory holiday in 1907.[5] In April 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, Congress and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made October 12 a federal holiday under the name Columbus Day. Mythology: Columbus Day is an annual celebration of a man who was a slaver and murderer. Real History: Columbus Day was a cheap political maneuver, backed by a Democratic Congress and administration, to curry favor among Italian-American voters. Nobody had to pressure anyone very much to get Columbus Day going in 1934. It was a zero-cost win/win all around for the Church, for Italian American leaders, and for the FDR Democrats who pushed the legislation through. Real History: Columbus Day now is just a welcome long weekend for most people, and an traditional annual tedious hot button dead horse to flog for people with too much free time on their hands. Real History: Most kids graduating from our high schools and colleges dont know jack shit about any history, period. Having some hothead politically correct teacher or professor or online whizbang teach them about the Columbus horror doesnt mean they will know much of anything about all the other complex goings-on in the Americas before and after 1492. Real History: Up till 1934, the only person honored by a national holiday was, rightly, George Washington. One can imagine that there was much dissent about expanding that honor in 1934, and that today such dissent would be seen as racist and WASP hegemonic. Real History: Columbus may not have discovered America but he created broad awareness that there was unknown land on the other side of the Atlantic. The 1492 date is the best starting point we have for when we started to become aware of all this new territory. Nobody discovered America until America was defined, geographically. Columbus discovered some islands, the Vikings could easily have settled on another peninsula of Greenland--they had no way of knowing. The Paleo-Indians were just migrating back and forth through what we call Siberia. To them, the Americas were just more Siberia. Lets start getting *real* about this crap instead of alternating back and forth between politically useful mythologies. Lets take a step *UP* and look at the Bigger Pictures.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 13:02:25 +0000
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