Revoke Columbus Day Holiday
October 13th, 2008 by FuzzTagged as: eliminate Columbus Day.
It’s high time we get rid of the day off for federal employees on Columbus Day. Sure, we get it, he ‘found’ America, but that doesn’t mean that we should be taking off of work.
In fact, here is how I would restructure this:
Tuesday, January 1 New Year’s Day
Monday, January 21 Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, February 18* Washington’s Birthday
Monday, May 26 Memorial Day
Friday, July 4 Independence Day
Monday, September 1 Labor Day
Monday, October 13 Columbus Day
Tuesday, November 11 Veterans Day
Thursday, November 27 Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, December 25 Christmas Day
Don’t get me wrong, all of these people deserve “days,” but I don’t think that federal employees should get a day off on non-major holidays.
Okay, I’m off to my Columbus Day barbecue now. 
j/k.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Actually, he didn’t find our part of America even. He ‘found’ Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and then later on “found” much of Central America’s coast. They should celebrate Columbus day.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:16 am
We should celebrate Amerigo Vespucci Day, then!
October 13th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Curious on your thoughts for keeping Christmas as a Federal Holiday. Playing Devil’s advocate, here.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:25 am
C’mon, Claude. Christmas is a religious holiday. People of any religion are allowed to take off of work for their various holidays. The majority of Americans celebrate and they would be off of work, anyway.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I’m curious about Labor Day. What are you, some sort of Union simpathyzer?
October 13th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I just like the day off around my birthday.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
You know I was thinking the exact thing this morning!
October 13th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Getting rid of those days would save the Gov a lot of money. How about a tax break?
October 13th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Fuzz, I totally agree…but my plan would be to just give the entire Christmas-New Years off. Of course, that would wreck your plan completely and double the amount of Federal Holidays =)
October 14th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
This is why we should get rid of Columbus day
When Columbus and his crew arrived on their second visit to Hispaniola, however, they took captive about two thousand local villagers who had come out to greet them. Cuneo wrote: “When our caravels… where to leave for Spain, we gathered…one thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495…For those who remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the island’s fort) in the vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the amount desired, which was done.”
Cuneo further notes that he himself took a beautiful teenage Carib girl as his personal slave, a gift from Columbus himself, but that when he attempted to have sex with her, she “resisted with all her strength.” So, in his own words, he “thrashed her mercilessly and raped her.”
While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made up by Columbus - which is to this day still taught in some US schools - to help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: “It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell…Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold…”
Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus’ men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: “A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand.”