Quote Originally Posted by Grace View Post
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!