Columbus day is Monday. I guess we are not supposed to celebrate that anymore. Old Chris was a rough character. Of course it was his navigator that named the placed the America's, apparently Chris just told everyone else , go that direction. But whatever the case was, Columbus never set foot on the north American continent. He died in Spain about three weeks after his final voyage. We should really celebrate Viking day as they were here long before Columbus. But then we are being told we should just celebrate Native American day because they were first. Thing is, that isn't the truth exactly, as they were migrants. The science tells us man migrated off the African continent and spread across the globe. Well that's what the science tells us today anyway, subject to change.
Still, if you are a European you would like to claim Columbus made the big discovery. As for me, I'm an American. I'm a native American in fact as I was indeed born here in America. I had a Grandmother that was born in Sweden so she wasn't a Native of America. I had great grandparents born in Germany, they weren't native Americans. And that's the way I see that. A native is a person born in that area, whether it is a town or a nation. It could also apply to a continent. I'm native to the land, the earth! It is the nativity of the person that Columbus day was originally meant to celebrate. Mostly it was to include Catholics in American society. You have to realize that Catholics were looked upon as a threat in the colonies, indeed in America as a whole. having been created by Protestants. Yes, it isn't just race that concerned people, it was religion, and to a degree that remains true to this very day. I suspect that will always be. Columbus day, as a celebration. was never intended to really be about Columbus, it was a political ploy to garner votes.
It's intent was one of inclusion, as strange as that sounds. You have to understand then, as now, all of this is really about money and power. If you read the real history of Columbus day and the reason for the "holiday" you begin to understand all of that. People really don't change all that much over time, Columbus day wasn't official until 1934, although we tend to think of it as being around forever. That is certainly not the case and was precipitated by politicians more than patriots. It had little to do with white supremacy or any of that. It had everything to do with getting the voters. Without Columbus day JFK would never had been elected, he being the first Catholic president this nation had. There was concern even then, about this Papist, and where his allegiance lied? Was it to the country, or to the Pope? As we all know JFK was a Democrat. And yes, that is important to know in this context. Benjamin Harrison, a Republican president, declared a "Discovery Day" to honor Columbus on the four hundredth anniversary, that would have been of course 1892. It was an election year and Harrison was running for reelection. He made that declaration just three weeks before election day. It was an attempt to gain the votes of the many Irish and Italians that had immigrated to America. They were predominately Catholic! It didn't work, Harrison lost the election but Discovery Day remained. Later on Roosevelt, a Democratic president and his congress, renamed the day Columbus Day, and declared it a national holiday, for much the same reason. It's all interesting if you really think about it. Columbus day was about religion and accepting people of a different faith into the country. It was about inclusion.
Bottom line for me is simply this, if you were born in America you are a native American. I'm not a German-American, a Swedish-American. a European-American I'm an American, native to this land. Yes Columbus is an unsavory character in history, along with a host of his contemporaries. A day of discovery can be observed without Columbus and perhaps the day should be changed back to what it was originally called, Discovery Day. The original purpose was to dispel fears about these foreigners and their foreign language and strange religious practices. After all. we came to America to escape the Pope, the Catholics, and their imposition of rule! But, over time we came to realize that those folks weren't any different than us, not really. We will accept them, well as long as they vote for us anyway. You see, not much changes in the big picture, it's all in the details.
You DID say all that before, do you REMEMBER that?
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