Why do we celebrate Columbus Day？

Something curious is happening above New York City's Columbus Circle. Tourists and New Yorkers alike are rediscovering the statue that stands above it. Would you believe it? It's Christopher Columbus. Very nice. I heard from many New Yorker friends that they didn't even know that there is a statue of Columbus here. Thanks to the art installation of Tatsunishi. I love what you've done with the place, but do you think we should have maybe moved the statue off to the side to reach the 13-foot statue? Visitors climb six flights of stairs to an 800-square-foot deluxe apartment in the sky. Columbus has his own flat-screen TV, views of Central Park, even hardwood floors. There's a bathroom. How did you leave that out? Tomorrow, if you're a federal employee or a school kid, chances are you'll celebrate Columbus Day. But more and more states are leaving it off the official calendar. States like Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Does Columbus deserve his own holiday? Well, that's a good question because, you know, he actually didn't discover North America. He never set foot in North America and never even knew it existed. And he wasn't the first person to discover the American continent from Europe. Lief Erikson made landfall in North America centuries earlier. And says historian Lawrence Berggren, who strolled with me through New York City's Hispanic Society, there were plenty of explorers sailing the seas in Columbus' era. It's kind of like space exploration. If it hadn't been John Glenn to be the first person to circle the world, it would have been another astronaut at that time because the moment was right. But there are no ditties about Amerigo Vespucci. And not just because it's hard to rhyme Vespucci. You try it. Columbus came along and with his outsized ego and his sense of destiny and his also passion for recording what he did, he put his stamp on that era. Ironic, since as every school kid knows, Columbus was actually looking for a route to China when the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria set sail. But even after four voyages, when many of his own shipmates were convinced that they discovered a new world, Columbus refused to acknowledge it. These sailors are saying, hey, this is not China. This is a whole different thing. That's right. That's right. So with each voyage, you know, in a sense he disproved his hypothesis, but didn't want to realize it. So in a certain way, there's a certain kind of chaotic, tragic heroism about his misguidedness. We now look at it with the benefit of hindsight as the new world. He would have been astounded at his posthumous reputation. It would have made no sense to him. Make no mistake, Columbus was a brilliant navigator who sailed across the Atlantic in five weeks, fast even by today's standards, and with almost no loss of life on board. He would introduce Europe to the potato, the pineapple, the tomato, and a very bad habit. We saw Indians walking by with burning weeds in their mouths. Well, that was tobacco. But that's not why he got his own national holiday. That happened when a U.S. president discovered the Italian-American vote. Columbus Day started in 1937, as recently as that by President Roosevelt, largely as a political move for a federal holiday, and he wanted to incorporate the Italian-American vote in the Democratic Party. But even a day off, and spectacular discounts, can't quiet the storm that from the beginning has clouded Columbus's legacy. Columbus was always controversial. This is not just political correctness or something that started in the 1970s. This goes back to his voyages, and the brutality was the main reason. Stories of the way he treated the Indians, the fact that he penned them up or killed them, got back to Spain. Even Ferdinand and Isabella, who were not really known as apostles of humanitarianism, were appalled. When the Taino Indians of Hispaniola realized that Columbus's men were staying, they saw no way out. They felt that their homelands and their women were being taken away by Columbus's men, and that Columbus's men were stealing the future of their people, and they responded by mass suicides. Columbus and others writes about this, thousands of Indians poisoning themselves or jumping off of cliffs to their deaths because they felt that they had no future left. That's one reason why Carl Frank Jr., an I.T. consultant in St. Louis, wants to rename the holiday. We feel like instead of having a federal holiday that divides us, that we need a federal holiday that unites us. Liftoff of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Frank wants to call it Exploration Day. It would be unique as a federal holiday in the sense that it celebrates the past and the past explorers, the thousands of them, the unnamed as well as the well-named, and also what's possible for America if we kind of put our heads together and work towards a common goal. But before we say goodbye Columbus, enjoy the day. That is, if you have it all.