The Origins of Columbus Day

October 12th is the day on which Christopher Columbus and his crew first landed in the New World. Realistically, one cannot claim that Columbus discovered the New World as the two continents had been populated by aboriginal peoples for a few thousand years prior to his arrival. We also cannot give him credit as the first European discoverer of the New World as there are numerous documented accounts of Viking and other European voyages to the New World in the centuries before Columbus. So, just what did Columbus accomplish? He brought the New World to the attention of the European masses (at least those in a position of influence) at a point in time when Europe was ready to expand her horizons and connect with distant places for trade and colonization. It was Columbus who brought the old and new worlds together in a way that changed history and that is why he is remembered and why his achievement was of such significance.

The first recorded celebration of Columbus Day in the United States took place in New York City on October 12, 1792 when a group known as the Columbian Order held a parade to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the landing of Columbus. The Columbian Order was a political organization that was also known as the Tammany Society which in later years morphed into the corrupt political machine known as Tammany Hall.

A little over a half a century later, in 1866, following the start of Italian immigration to the U.S., another parade was held in New York City this time by Italians celebrating their link with American history. Three years later, in 1869, the Italian community in San Francisco held a parade on October 12 to commemorate Columbus and his discovery. Just as the Irish had their celebrations and parades on St. Patrick's Day, the Italians celebrated their heritage on Columbus Day. Also, like St. Patrick's Day, Columbus Day soon spread beyond the Italian community making it a general celebration. However, unlike St. Patrick's Day were everyone at least claims to be Irish for the day, the link between Columbus Day and Italy soon broke for most people. While Italians may celebrate the day as a tribute to their Italian heritage, the rest of us celebrate it as the day America was discovered (some are even surprised to discover that the America Columbus discovered refers to the Americas or all of the Western Hemisphere and that Columbus himself never set foot on the land now known as the United States of America).

The celebration of Columbus Day day continued to spread and in 1905 Colorado became the first state to make Columbus Day an official state holiday. Other states followed and, in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued aproclamation designating October 12th, Columbus Day, as a national holiday. In 1971 the U.S. Congress, bowing to popular demand for more 3 day weekends, voted to move the official celebration of Columbus Day to the second Monday in October.

In the U.S., Columbus Day (the second Monday in October) is a Federal holiday with all U.S. government offices closed for the day. In addition Federal government offices, banks and some state and local offices are also closed along with some schools. Many schools and most private sector employers do not receive the day off.

Because Columbus' discovery led to the opening of the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Canadian Arctic in the northern regions of North America to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, to Europe and European culture, Columbus Day is celebrated in many nations.

In 1917 Argentina became the first nation in Latin America to celebrate what became known as the Día de la Raza or day of the race which commemorates the fusion of European and New World peoples and cultures into a new culture and new national identities. Venezuela followed in 1921, Chile in 1923 and Mexico in 1928 in celebrating October 12th as Día de la Raza. Other Latin American nations followed these countries in commemorating the date in succeeding years.

In the Bahamas, where Columbus first landed, the holiday is known as Discovery Day. Discovery Day is also celebrated in Haiti, but here the holiday is on December 5th instead of October 12th since December 5th is the day on which Columbus first sighted the north coast of the island of Hispaniola. The island of Hispaniola is shared by the nations of Haiti (western half) and the Dominican Republic (eastern half). Columbus' first sighting of the island was along the northwest coast which is now the nation of Haiti.

In the Dominican Republic on the eastern half of the island, which Columbus visited a month later on his first voyage, the October 12th date is celebrated as Columbus Day. Columbus is a major figure in the Dominican Republic as, among other things his remains supposedly rest in a tomb in the capital of Santo Domingo. Until 1992 the tomb of Columbus rested in the Cathedral of St. Maria the Lesser. In 1992 the casket containing the remains of Columbus was moved to the newly constructed Faro a Colón, or Columbus Lighthouse. Whether or not the casket actually contains the remains of Columbus is open to dispute as other places, most notably the Santa Maria Cathedral in Seville, Spain also claim to have the remains of Columbus.

Discovery Day is also celebrated in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador as well as the Yukon territory. However, these dates do not honor Christopher Columbus. The Newfoundland and Labrador holiday is celebrated on June 24th and commemorates another Italian born explorer, John Cabot, who, like Columbus, sailed in the service of a foreign monarch, In Cabot's case the King of England. The Newfoundland and Labrador holiday commemorates the discovery by Cabot of the region around Newfoundland and Labrador in 1497. Again, like Columbus, Cabot was far from the first visitor, as fishermen from Atlantic coastal villages that dot the shores of France, Spain and Portugal had been fishing in this area for years. However, Cabot's voyage and mapping of the area did bring the area to the attention of a larger European audience and paved the way for future English explorations, and claims, on these lands in North America. Discovery Day in the Yukon is celebrated on the third Monday in August and, somewhat ironically, celebrates the discovery of gold, a treasure that Columbus sought but never found in abundance, in 1896 which led to the famous Klondike Gold Rush. Columbus Day itself is not celebrated in Canada, however, the second Monday in October is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day in Canada.

Finally, October 12th is also celebrated in Spain, the country which sent Columbus on his famous voyage and whose Queen, Isabella of Castile (also known as Isabella the Catholic) provided the financing (money for Columbus' voyage came from Isabella's personal funds and not the national treasury) for the expedition. In Spain the holiday is known as Hispanic Day and is celebrated with a huge military parade in Madrid presided over by the king and attended by numerous dignitaries that include foreign dipliomats and local officials from all over Spain.

On August 3, 1492 Christopher Columbus and the 88 members of his crew and their families attended Mass in the Church of St. George the Martyr in the Andalusian town of Palos de la Frontera or Palos as it is commonly called. Here they prayed for a safe voyage and received the sacrament of holy communion. Leaving the church they boarded their three ships the Niña, the Pinta and, Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria, to begin their voyage to the East Indies.

Not knowing how long the voyage would last, the ships left Palos de la Frontera well stocked with food. Due to primitive storage conditions, food for the voyage consisted of dried legume vegetables (probably beans, lentils and/or peas), hardtack (sea biscuits), almonds, rice, salted sardines, raisins, salted dried cod fish (which probably came from the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland), salted beef and pork, garlic, honey, cheese, olive oil and molasses all of which could be expected to keep from spoiling so long as they were kept dry on the long voyage. To drink, there was water and red wine. The first leg of the trip was across a known route from Spain to the Canary Islands which are located in the Atlantic Ocean to the west of the African nation of Morocco. While these islands were visited by the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans in ancient times, their existence had been largely forgotten during the Dark Ages that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. However, beginning in 1402 Spain began the conquest of these islands and, while it wasn't until the end of the 15th century that the conquest was completed, they were largely under Spanish control when Columbus began his voyage. Arriving in the Spanish controlled area of the Canaries on September 6, 1492, Columbus and his crew were able to replenish their stock of fresh water and other supplies.

Leaving the Canary Islands, the three ship convoy of Columbus and his 88 men headed toward the unknown. The idea that Columbus theorized that the world was round and was out to prove this theory is false. This myth was probably started by Washington Irving in his 1828 book The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Columbus, like most of his contemporaries knew that the earth was round and this fact had been known since 240 B.C. when Eratosthenes, a Hellenistic Greek scholar living in Alexandria, Egypt not only argued convincingly that the earth was round, but also produced a rather close estimate of its circumference. Further, there is some evidence that Columbus may have been on some trading voyages to northern Europe and had heard accounts of the Vikings earlier discovery of lands to the west. Finally, recent archaeological evidence found at Port de Grave on the northeast coast of the island of Newfoundland, has proved that for many years prior to the voyage of Columbus, fishermen from the coasts of France, Spain and Portugal had been making annual trips to the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland to catch cod, which they preserved with salt and drying before bringing it home to Europe for food. So what was the great fear of the sailors that made them almost mutiny just prior to sighting land on October 12th? The fact is these men were sailing blindly into unknown waters with primitive navigation instruments and very little information to guide them. Using Marco Polo's account of his travels in the Orient which was published almost 200 years earlier, along with some other stories and estimates of the distance from the west coast of Europe to the east coast of China, Columbus plotted a course straight across the Atlantic from Europe to what he thought would be Asia. He had a compass and the stars (especially the North Star) to help him maintain a straight course as well as a method to calculate his speed and distance. However, since his estimates as to the distance between Europe and land to the west were not very accurate, neither was his estimate of the date of his landfall. This obviously made the sailors nervous as they kept sailing west without sighting land as expected. Land was finally sighted and, on October 12, 1492 Columbus and his men first went ashore on one of the islands in the Bahamas.

Following their first landing, Columbus and his crew explored the islands of the Caribbean and, believing that they were in the islands of the East Indies, kept looking for the Chinese mainland. On Christmas Eve 1492 the Santa Maria hit a sandbar near Cap Haïtien on the island of Hispaniola (the island which is now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and had to be abandoned. Columbus and his crew were able to salvage parts of the ship and used the wood to build a fort on shore. In honor of Christmas, Columbus named the fort La Navidad. Unable to fit all of his men on board the much smaller Niña (the captain of the Pinta, Martín Alonso Pinzón, had set off on his own without permission days earlier), Columbus left 40 men at La Navidad to await his return from Spain.

On January 2, 1493, Columbus left La Navidad and continued his exploration along the coast of the island of Hispaniola where, on about January 6th they encountered the Pinta. On January 16, 1493 the Niña and Pinta set sail from Samana Bay on the northeast end of the island of Hispaniola for Spain. A storm in the Atlantic separated the two ships for a while and they were again separated in the vicinity of the Azores when Pinzón in the Pinta tried to outrun the Niña and be the first to return to Spain with the news of their discovery. Columbus and the Niña made it to the island of Santa Maria in the Portugese controlled Azores on February 15th where they were received with some hostility as Portugal and Spain were not on good terms at that time. Continuing on, they arrived in Lisbon, Portugal on March 4th and from there sailed south to their home port. At noon on March 15, 1493 the Niña docked in Palos de la Frontera where they were given a hero's welcome. A few hours later, on the same day, the Pinta entered the port and docked. The Pinta's captain, Martín Alonso Pinzón, had been racing to arrive first with the news and claim the glory of the discovery. Had he arrived a few hours earlier, Pinzón might have been the one honored as the discoverer of the New World in which case we would be celebrating Pinzón Day rather than Columbus Day on October 12th.