{"id":2034,"date":"2014-10-13T23:13:58","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T03:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/?p=2034"},"modified":"2014-10-13T23:51:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T03:51:29","slug":"why-do-we-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/?p=2034","title":{"rendered":"Why do we do it."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"columbo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Well.\u00a0\u00a0 Today was Columbus Day.<\/p>\n

It celebrates Christopher Columbus “discovering” America.\u00a0\u00a0 This all sounds very America.\u00a0 But I wonder why we hang on to this holiday tradition.<\/p>\n

We have a lot of American traditions.\u00a0 Many of them, don’t make a lot of sense.\u00a0 But they call it “steeped” in tradition for good reason.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Steep.<\/p>\n

But back to Chris and his boat.<\/p>\n

The thing of it is…. he really wasn’t such a hero after all.\u00a0 You may not like me for saying so, but I will tell you a few observations I’ve learned from reading.<\/p>\n

He set out, on the good Queen’s money to find a shorter passage to India.\u00a0 Well.\u00a0 Strike one.\u00a0 He failed to complete his original mission.\u00a0\u00a0 When he finally did bump into land, it was on the shores of the Bahamas.\u00a0 There were already lots of people there.\u00a0 Strike two.\u00a0 This was no big discovery for them.\u00a0 Well… except for discovering a white man trespassing on their shores.<\/p>\n

But Christopher Columbus didn’t stop there. He captured a lot of indigenous people and sold them into slavery.\u00a0\u00a0 He tortured a bunch.\u00a0 That’s three big red X’s by my count.\u00a0 And then some.<\/p>\n

Moving on….. he wiped out more than half the population of Haiti with disease and pillaging and destruction.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We are striking out more the entire St. Louis Cardinals’ bullpen.<\/p>\n

Okay.\u00a0 If you really want to credit any sailors for landing here first, that would be the Vikings.\u00a0 Not the Minnesota Vikings but the ones from Iceland.\u00a0 Leif Eriksson to be exact.\u00a0 The son of Erik the Red.\u00a0 They weren’t saints either.\u00a0\u00a0 But they landed in the Americas more than 500 years before the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria.<\/p>\n

But nonetheless.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Many cities around the country are deciding to no long “recognize” this pseudo-holiday.\u00a0 Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for giving the U.S. Postal Workers the day off.\u00a0 But I think we should change the name of this holiday, to better reflect true historical representations.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what it would be… to really represent a celebration of men in boats coming here and conquering native people.\u00a0 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.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

So… Happy EOHTTUOUHBTFOJSSDFA Day<\/strong><\/em><\/span>.\u00a0 It will look great on Greeting Cards.<\/p>\n

Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.\u00a0 – Earl Nightingale<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well.\u00a0\u00a0 Today was Columbus Day. It celebrates Christopher Columbus “discovering” America.\u00a0\u00a0 This all sounds very America.\u00a0 But I wonder why we hang on to this holiday tradition. We have a lot of American traditions.\u00a0 Many of them, don’t make a lot of sense.\u00a0 But they call it “steeped” in tradition for good reason.\u00a0 Steep by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nowyouseeit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2034"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2040,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}