Columbus Day

[Karen]

Just out of curiosity, how many of you Pet Talkers get Columbus Day off? I even forgot it was a "holiday" today until I checked the mail (none) and tried to call a doctor's office (closed) and listened to their message. I have never gotten it off, even when I worked for other people!

This being the Boston area, there are often big doings in the Italians neighborhoods for the day, of course! I just didn't happen to venture through any of them today, but it was cool and feeling quite October-like today!

And of course I know it is no longer politically correct in some quarters to celebrate it, given everything that happened afterwards, the damage to native peoples, etc., but I hardly think all that is the fault of one guy who dared to push the limits.

[Grace]

When I was growing up, Columbus Day was on October 12th - not a minute earlier or later. If it was on a Tuesday, we got that day off school. If it was on a Saturday - well, we already had Saturdays off.

I can't understand why it is being celebrated today - if they waited until Friday, people could still get a long weekend

[phesina]

I somehow had the idea it was no longer observed as an "official" holiday, what with the lack of joy over the occasion for the Native Americans.. but there was no mail delivery today, so I guess it still is.

Just like you, Gretchen, back in "my day" the holidays were observed on whatever the actual date of the occasion was. that was before many of them started to become excuses for long weekends.

[Freedom]

I worked in banking, but with the stock markets, so most of us in my dept had to work as the markets were open.

I saw this on someone's FB page and was rather taken aback by the posting:
Happy "rape, torture & pillage
an indigenous people" day.

I don't think that was Columbus, I think that was a different group and many years later???

[Grace]

I worked in banking, but with the stock markets, so most of us in my dept had to work as the markets were open.

I saw this on someone's FB page and was rather taken aback by the posting:
Happy "rape, torture & pillage
an indigenous people" day.

I don't think that was Columbus, I think that was a different group and many years later???

Sandie, I think they do refer to Columbus that way. I went looking and found this - http://http://racerelations.about.com/od/historyofracerelations/a/The-Argument-Against-Columbus-Day.htm

[Karen]

And it is every bit as much an over-generalization as can be. To lay the sins of hundreds at the feet of one man is just plain willful ignorance.

(Mind you, I theoretically am part Native American on one side, but it was just a family story from a few generations back, no paperwork to prove it. I am also part lots of other nationalities - [Swedish, English, Norman French, Irish, Scottish, etc., etc.,] so I am a genuine American Mutt when it comes right down to it.)

And if one studies the history of the indigenous peoples before the "Europeans" arrived for the biggest wave of migration, one realizes that certain groups wiped each other out long before "white" people arrived.

It is a complicated issue, no doubt.

[Karen]

When I was growing up, Columbus Day was on October 12th - not a minute earlier or later. If it was on a Tuesday, we got that day off school. If it was on a Saturday - well, we already had Saturdays off.

I can't understand why it is being celebrated today - if they waited until Friday, people could still get a long weekend

Retailers push for "Monday" holidays, to have the excuse for sales, and big organizations and corporations prefer a standardized 'system" instead of holidays on seemingly random days of the week that keeping it to a particular date would mean. It's all that corporate lobbying, I suspect. The last company I worked for said we could take either Columbus Day or Veteran's Day off, but in reality, didn't hold to it.

And in New England, of course, much of the tourist industry banks on leaf-peepers making a holiday of it, and roads North tend to be rather clogged as a result. This has nothing to do with when the foliage is really at its peak, and where, as it doesn't have anything to do with arbitrary dates on a calendar, rather temperature, rainfall, and climate conditions!