Should we Still Celebrate Columbus Day?

@Ragman,

Quote:

Not too many holidays represent the decimation and destruction of a native people.

Amazing...........

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Quote:
Not too many holidays represent the decimation and destruction of a native people.

Amazing...........

No, please elucidate. Amazing how?

1 Reply

@Ragman,

Ragman wrote:

Not too many holidays represent the decimation and destruction of a native people.

The holiday also represents the creation of a people, though.

1 Reply

@snood,

Amazing that you can blamed one man for the spread of diseases from the old world to the new a few hundred years before the germ theory or blamed the interactions of difference groups in the new world for the next 400 years on him.

footnote the peaceful natives had before Columbus had been doing the same thing as Europeans had IE killing each others in wars and conflicts not to mention groups that have the lovely habit of seizing women and children from surrounding tribes and cutting their still beating hearts out as a token of their love for their gods.

The first settlement in Virginia was wiped out by the peaceful natives and Columbus lost a very high percent of his crews on this third voyage if memory serve me correctly.

Only someone who look at the world in a childlike manner would think of taking the position that Columbia was in anyway or in any manner responsible for the next few hundred years and what happen to those poor so call peace loving natives.

In any case he was a great explorer and a man of his times who for good and evil connected two great branches of mankind that had been apart since the land bridge flooded ten of thousands of year before.

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@InfraBlue,

InfraBlue wrote:

Ragman wrote:

Not too many holidays represent the decimation and destruction of a native people.

The holiday also represents the creation of a people, though.

It should matter if the representation is truth or not.

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@snood,

No reason not to honor one of the great explorers in human history.

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@snood,

neologist wrote:

Many holidays have sinister roots. Should Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter be crossed off the list? A few others, too.

I personally don't celebrate any holiday. But I don't turn the fire hose on anyone's parade, either. Why not add a few holidays for special causes? Most of us could use a few more days off. And bank closings don't hurt, either.

snood wrote:

Yeah, what the ****? And it shouldn't matter who is memorialized either, should it? I mean, let's not be too snooty about it. We should include a couple of famous mass murderers and war criminals for good measure, don't you think? It is the land of equal opportunity and inclusion, after all.

Agreed. You have a point. That's why you will not find me a celebrant.

We could cancel them all and just make every 3rd Monday a Blue Monday, throw in an occasional TGIF and whatever might pop some congressional cork. That would give us all a break now and then and we wouldn't have to feel guilty about it.

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Yes.

Labor Day to Thanksgiving is too far to go without a holiday, and Columbus Day is the best time of the year to go out and look at this great beautiful country.

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@Linkat,

Quote:

To be honest - no one is celebrating Columbus - they are enjoying a three day weekend.

Name me a holiday where there is more than a tiny bit of interest in the alleged purpose for the day off. Unions are in ill repute so there goes labor day. Now that the WW2 Generation is mostly dead I dont see much interest in celebrating war vets. First Presidents that many can remember the name of and which we dont know much of anything about dont rate birthday parties. We are rapidly becoming a post Christian nation so Easter and Christmas should go....if we are to follow the logic that rubbed out Columbus Day.

Thanksgiving stays, maybe.

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@Ragman,

This is specious twaddle. Leaving aside that there is no reason to link Columbus to "the decimation and destruction of native people," as a holiday, that was never the point of the exercise. It was only to celebrate the man who lead Europeans to the Americas.

It is only an artifact of late 20th century political rectitude to suggest that Columbus somehow represents genocide.

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@hawkeye10,

I think, in part, many of the holidays have morphed from what they were originally ----

Labor Day is not about unions, but more about all working people. Veteran's Day is about a day to honor all Veterans not just WWII, Memorial Day is honor and remember all that have passed, President's Day is to buy cars - no really to remember all Presidents (used to Lincoln and Washington).

Forget about Thanksgiving - we can't celebrate that any more - try going to Plymouth now, it is all about protesting similar to Columbus.

So I really see no difference in Columbus Day changing to fit how we recognize and celebrate certain holidays.

1 Reply

@neologist,

Quote:

We could cancel them all and just make every 3rd Monday a Blue Monday, throw in an occasional TGIF and whatever might pop some congressional cork. That would give us all a break now and then and we wouldn't have to feel guilty about it.

OR, we could deal with issues that people have with holidays as they come up, not generalize everything into "We can't celebrate anything, anymore!", or personalize it to the point anyone feels "guilty".

It's not every holiday that is contested every time, even though quite a few get scrutiny now, some for very good reason. Native Americans for instance, have good reason to not want to have to look at Columbus on the calendar. Blacks for instance had good reason to fight for years against the status quo to have MLK's birthday included.

1 Reply

@snood,

And also Thanksgiving would need to go - it is protested every year as well as Columbus Day.

I think there is a degree of seriousness about "everything has to go..."

It does seem every holiday as it comes up has someone or some group protesting against it - Halloween is around the corner and just recently a school canceled it and then re-enstated it as there were protests each way.

I am not belittling Native Americans feeling the way they do about Columbus it is a legit concern - just reality that every holiday (or at least almost every holiday) brings legit concerns from one group or another.

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@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

And also Thanksgiving would need to go - it is protested every year as well as Columbus Day.

I think there is a degree of seriousness about "everything has to go..."

It does seem every holiday as it comes up has someone or some group protesting against it - Halloween is around the corner and just recently a school canceled it and then re-enstated it as there were protests each way.

I am not belittling Native Americans feeling the way they do about Columbus it is a legit concern - just reality that every holiday (or at least almost every holiday) brings legit concerns from one group or another.

OK, so let's say every holiday is challenged by some group (actually I think it balances out - you mention Thanksgiving but but I don't happen to think that one and a few more are going anywhere). I worry more about the group who gripe about things being too "politically correct" than I do about those griping about the status quo. And so it goes...

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@Linkat,

Quote:

I am not belittling Native Americans feeling the way they do about Columbus it is a legit concern -

You mean that they would prefer living low technology lives and seeing the majority of their children dying before reaching adulthood along with their wives dying in great numbers in child birth?

The poor plain Indians would not even had horses to move about with as it was Europeans who brought them to the new world.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

I see votes down for my question but once more would anyone care to address my question would modern native peoples care to go back the the non-metal, low tech hunter-gather societies that exist before Columbus?

You know short lives, with constant low level warfare between tribes.

An no horses to grant the freedom of the plains to them.

Oh and the more advance societies in Mexico and south America into large scale human sacrifices.

1 Reply

@Linkat,

New England deserves whatever it gets for trying to co-opt Thanksgiving, and claiming they invented the holiday. In fact, Thanksgiving was created as a national holiday by Lincoln in 1863, at the time he was exploiting Gettysburg politically. In fact, a religious holiday (thank who? thanks for what?) in an ostensibly secular state is an odd duck. Even as an atheist, though, i don't find Thanksgiving offensive--maybe just move it to a Monday.

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@BillRM,

we can thank columbus and his colleagues for introducing many simple , but deadly plagues on the Amerinds, thus reducing their populations by 90+% in less than 250 years.

Youve made it sound as if warring tribes and large scale conquests were unknown to the"Civilized" Old World

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@farmerman,

Columbus and his colleagues have nothing to feel bad about re the microbes, the indians would have been exposed to them sooner or later no matter what, and died. And I dont feel bad for the indians at all, they had chances to integrate with their betters. They were aware that they were expected to drop their primitive ways, they were to learn the ways of civilized men, but they largely refused. It was their poor choices that condemned them, or maybe they were just too dumb to get on with what they needed to do.

1 Reply

@snood,

Absolutely. Facts should matter.

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Should we Still Celebrate Columbus Day?

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