Well.   Today was Columbus Day.

It celebrates Christopher Columbus “discovering” America.   This all sounds very America.  But I wonder why we hang on to this holiday tradition.

We have a lot of American traditions.  Many of them, don’t make a lot of sense.  But they call it “steeped” in tradition for good reason.  Steep by definition means a few different things… 1. Rising or falling sharply; 2. Not reasonable or excessive; or…. 3. Soaked in water or liquid.   Steep.

But back to Chris and his boat.

The thing of it is…. he really wasn’t such a hero after all.  You may not like me for saying so, but I will tell you a few observations I’ve learned from reading.

He set out, on the good Queen’s money to find a shorter passage to India.  Well.  Strike one.  He failed to complete his original mission.   When he finally did bump into land, it was on the shores of the Bahamas.  There were already lots of people there.  Strike two.  This was no big discovery for them.  Well… except for discovering a white man trespassing on their shores.

But Christopher Columbus didn’t stop there. He captured a lot of indigenous people and sold them into slavery.   He tortured a bunch.  That’s three big red X’s by my count.  And then some.

Moving on….. he wiped out more than half the population of Haiti with disease and pillaging and destruction.    We are striking out more the entire St. Louis Cardinals’ bullpen.

Okay.  If you really want to credit any sailors for landing here first, that would be the Vikings.  Not the Minnesota Vikings but the ones from Iceland.  Leif Eriksson to be exact.  The son of Erik the Red.  They weren’t saints either.   But they landed in the Americas more than 500 years before the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria.

But nonetheless.  In these parts… ALL of the Americas, north, central, and south…. had been inhabited by indigenous people for thousands and thousands of years, before any Europeans came bumbling along.

Many cities around the country are deciding to no long “recognize” this pseudo-holiday.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for giving the U.S. Postal Workers the day off.  But I think we should change the name of this holiday, to better reflect true historical representations.

I’m not sure what it would be… to really represent a celebration of men in boats coming here and conquering native people.  Maybe we should just call it an Early October Holiday to tide us over until Halloween, because the Fourth of July seems so dang far away Day.

So… Happy EOHTTUOUHBTFOJSSDFA Day.  It will look great on Greeting Cards.

Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.  – Earl Nightingale