Something I wish I could say to any Italian-Americans angry at efforts to eliminate or rename Columbus Day, because to them it’s a holiday celebrating their ethnicity’s contributions to our history:
Dudes, or rather, Paisans, I know where you’re coming from.
We all like having a special day to celebrate the people we come from, and what they accomplished.
For you, being asked to give up Columbus Day must be a little like being asked to give up Christmas.
But here’s the issue.
It’s not that Columbus was evil. It’s that Columbus is lame.
Completely aside from Columbus having been a really bad guy, not just a “complicated” guy like Jefferson who had some good works to praise in addition to the personal conduct that establishes his feet of clay, but a genuinely bad guy, whose legacy is really not something you should be proud of, have you given any thought to the other message you send, by choosing him as your standard-bearer?
To wit: the guy you point to, to celebrate the contributions of Italian-Americans, was not an American by any definition.
He lived and died before there was a United States of America.
His day was five hundred years ago.
So, when you put him up as your great icon of the Italian experience in America, you are saying that in five hundred years, in half a millennium, in coming up on two hundred and fifty years of the United States as a country, when asked to name one (1) guy memorable enough to structure a holiday around, you can only come up with one guy who never even reached the mainland, and then NOBODY ELSE.
Do you really want to advance the thesis that it was Columbus, followed by nothing?
Columbus, and then all we can remember is various guys in pinstripe suits offing each other during spaghetti dinners?
Columbus, and Goodfellas?
Columbus is more than a crappy role model; he’s not even in the intended subset. He doesn’t celebrate who you are. He doesn’t celebrate what the best of you have done for this country. He doesn’t celebrate the reasons why your subculture needs to be admired. He’s old-world rapaciousness, not new-world innovation. Feeling protective and proprietary of his holiday is another way of saying, “Yeah, we did that, but somehow, we can’t think of anything else.” Which is really, really guys, I mean it, really, not giving yourselves nearly enough credit.
Go to your encyclopedias; go to your historians; go to your experts on the Italian-American immigrant experience.
I’ll lay odds it won’t take so much as a single day of research to come up with ten Italian-Americans more deserving of a holiday celebrating your influence on America. People you can be proud of, who everybody can be proud of – and if your argument is that none of them are currently as iconic as Columbus, then I’d submit that you deeply underestimate your talent at public relations.
Pick among them. Give us a less revolting hero. Then sell the hell out of him. Make him iconic.
And give us that person’s name on your holiday, instead of the man who set dogs on women and children, and encouraged rape as a tool of oppression.
Can’t you do that?
Seriously, I’m showing you respect by saying I really think you’d find it easy.
Comment By: Michael Fay
October 12th, 2015 at 1:19 pm
As I understand it, Columbus day was a product of the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic organization. They wanted a holiday that celebrated a Catholic, and they couldn’t think of a better choice than Columbus, like, say Bartolome de le Casis.
Comment By: Matthew B. Tepper
October 12th, 2015 at 3:17 pm
I think we should just replace it entirely with an Italian-American Appreciation Day. Or, if a particular person must be honored, how about Arturo Toscanini?
Comment By: David Vineyard
October 12th, 2015 at 4:18 pm
It was a political choice to have the day so it is fair game to end it the same way. It does not lesson the import of his voyage to point out he was less than a good man. Then again if we start holding heroes to that standard we won’t have a lot left.
Comment By: Lynn Maners
October 12th, 2015 at 6:21 pm
If you’ve read Charles Mann’s books, we should rename it “Reuniting of Pangea Day.”
Comment By: Anne Brewer
October 12th, 2015 at 8:19 pm
also don’t celebrate a dude who was lost and too proud to admit it
Comment By: Eva Whitley
October 13th, 2015 at 4:17 am
If it were up to me (3/8ths Italian), I’d move Thanksgiving to the second Monday in October (as the Canadians do) because cooking that dinner is An Undertaking, and easier to do with two days off in advance to prepare. And the holiday in late November should honor the people who walked here from Asia and can truly claim to have “discovered” America.
Comment By: Todd Austin Hunt
October 13th, 2015 at 4:18 pm
Italian-Americans have enriched American culture, literature, art, cinema, music, and food in so many branches it’s hard to count. We’re better because of these figures and these contributions. Great letter. I hope opinions change.