Columbus Day

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Columbus Day
Image:Christopher Columbus3.jpg</td>
First Landing of Columbus on the Shores of the New World, after the painting by Discoro Téofilo de la Puebla
Observed by	the Americas, Spain
Type	Historical
Significance	A celebration honoring Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the Americas in 1492
Date	second Monday in October (USA); October 12 (actual/traditional)
2008 date	October 13 (USA)
2009 date	October 12 (USA)
2010 date	October 11 (USA)
Related to	Día de la Raza in many Latin American countries, Discovery Day in the Bahamas, Hispanic Day in Spain, Día de las Culturas in Costa Rica and Día de la Resistencia Indígena in Venezuela. Also, Thanksgiving in Canada, which falls on the same date.

Columbus Day is a holiday celebrated in many countries in the Americas, commemorating the date of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World on October 12, 1492. Similar holidays, celebrated as Día de la Raza (Day of the Race) in many countries in Latin America, Día de las Culturas (Day of the Cultures) in Costa Rica, Discovery Day in the Bahamas, Hispanic Day in Spain, and the newly-renamed (as of 2002) Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance) in Venezuela, commemorate the same event.

1 United States observance
2 Día de la Raza
3 Opposition to Columbus Day
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] United States observance

Italian-Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of Italian-American heritage. Columbus Day was brought about as a U.S. national holiday by a lawyer-son of Genovese immigrants coming around-the-horn who built ranches in the 1850s along the Sierra Foothills. As the Gold ran out, these "Cal-Italians" were from the Alpenino hills, skilled and able to prosper as self-sufficent farmers in this natural environment. San Francisco has the oldest Columbus Day celebration, Italians in San Francisco have celebrated there since 1869. This lawyer then moved to Colorado to live. Here, the first state celebration was in Colorado in 1905 (where there was Genovese miners), and in 1937, at the behest of the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic fraternal service organization named for the voyager), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt set aside Columbus Day as a holiday in the United States. Since 1971, the holiday has been commemorated in the U.S. on the second Monday in October, the same day as Thanksgiving in neighboring Canada.

[edit] Día de la Raza

The date of Columbus' arrival in the Americas is celebrated in Latin America (and in some Latino communities in the USA) as the Día de la Raza ("day of the race"), commemorating the first encounters of Europe and Native Americans. The day was first celebrated in Argentina in 1917, Venezuela in 1921, Chile in 1923, and Mexico in 1928. The day was also celebrated under this title in Spain until 1958, when it was changed to the "Día de la Hispanidad." In Spain, the "race" of reference in the original name was that of the Spanish people and did not reflect the mestizo characterization found in many Latin American countries (see La Raza).

In 2002, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela changed the name to Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance).

[edit] Opposition to Columbus Day

This section does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations. This article has been tagged since December 2006.

In the state of Minnesota, Columbus Day is not celebrated, because, in fact the Vikings arrived in North America around 1000 AD and settled at L'anse aux Meadows in New Foundland [1], [2] 400 years before Columbus. However, in 2006, city offices in Minneapolis were closed, as well as libraries across the Twin Cities. [3]

Some people oppose Columbus Day, claiming his achievements are not worthy of a holiday. The modern-day legend of Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America is due to Washington Irving. His "biography" of Columbus, a dramatic and embellished account, was so popular it became accepted as fact in the English speaking countries. However, in the Spanish speaking countries Columbus' crossing of the Atlantic is widely accepted as the first contact between the two civilizations (European and native American) and additionally proved that the maritime technology was there to do it frequently. Historically, Columbus was not the first to discover America, nor was he the first European to land in America, though he was the first European to successfully bring European culture to the Americas. There is also controversy surrounding the treatment of the native people of the Americas by Columbus and by Spanish conquistadors.

In recent years, the holiday has been rejected by some people who view it as a celebration of conquest and genocide by the Spaniards. In its place, Indigenous Peoples Day is sometimes celebrated. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, "Puerto Rico-Virgin Islands Friendship Day" is celebrated on the same day as Columbus Day, due to the controversy surrounding the atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples of the present-day Caribbean during the Spanish colonization of the New World. In the state of South Dakota, the day is officially a state holiday known as "Native American Day", not Columbus Day.

Some have argued that the responsibility of contemporary governments and their citizens for allegedly ongoing acts of genocide against Native Americans are masked by positive Columbus myths and celebrations. These critics argue that a particular understanding of the legacy of Columbus has been used to legitimize their actions, and it is this misuse of history that must be exposed. Thus, Ward Churchill (an associate professor of Native American Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a leader of the American Indian Movement), has argued that certain myths about Columbus, and celebrations of Columbus, make it easier for people today to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions, or the actions of their governments.