So, I have been writing this for a few days but could not seem to put the finishing touches on it. It’s a few days late, but, well, deal with it.
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WOOOOOO BOY-HOWDY it sure is nice to be a part of the celebration of that time in 1492 when Columbus, in all of his magnanimous glory, sailed the ocean blue in search of the end of the world but found the amazing continent of American instead? Is it not nice to be a part of that thing that jump-started the peaceful integration of two of humanities lost tribes into one easilycomingalable social entity?
Oh, wait… That is not at all how it happened.
In my honest opinion, Columbus day is the weirdest holiday that we celebrate here in the ol’ US of A. This includes the fact that we celebrate things like Thanksgiving (a time when Indians gave food to cold, starving and destitute pilgrims only to be eradicated by said pilgrims a few months later), Halloween (A celebration of our dead wherein kids get diabetic and women get slutty) and Labour Day (wherein the labor unions who bilk wages from workers at exorbitant rates and use it to influence government into the desecration of the rights of small businesses are celebrated). Let’s go over some of the reasons that Americans really have no right to celebrate, much less get out of school or not be able to conduct any banking business, the fact that Columbus sailed his rich ass all the way across the Atlantic, shall we?
Ok, why did Columbus come across the ocean? According to popular belief it was to buck the notion that the world was flat and go find India in order to prove that you could get there from Europe.
I think not.
In all actuality he was looking for a faster way to India so that he could make more money and thus impress the court of Spain, the famous Ferdinand and Isabella. It was a voyage of greed and notoriety, not one of discovery. He was commissioned to get a new source of income and beat the Dutch and Portuguese to the proverbial punch in the trade wars being fought for the Indian subcontinent. Lets face it, going all the way around Africa is way less convenient than sailing through an empty ocean all the way to India, right?
The entire thing about the Earth being flat and the sailors being afraid of falling off the edge of the world and all that crap is pretty much total bullocks, as everyone knew that there was something out there. The Vikings had been on North America, around Nova Scotia, as early as the 10th century, and there is no reason to believe that their subsequent sacking of almost every major power that had risen since then would not have spread the knowledge that SOMETHING was out there throughout the world. Along with this information comes the fact that Eratosthenes had calculated the circumference of the planet to within a few hundred miles in 240 BC. Since circumference, for the uninitiated, means distance around and not across, one could safely assume that by the 1400’s people knew that the world was indeed not a big table full of warring countries, pissed off religions and crazy animals all over the place that also has water from the oceans pouring off the edges into space.
Now, what about the idea that Columbus discovered America. While I read in the paper the other day that schools are no longer teaching this, it doesn’t stop the fact that it is celebrated as a federal holiday here, thus firmly cementing the idea that Columbus had really anything to do with North America in the popular psyche. In all actuality, Columbus landed hundreds of miles south of Florida in the Bahamas. He landed at San Salvador on Oct. 12 1492, and explored Hispaniola and what is now Cuba. Notice that nowhere did I say he discovered America. If this were true, we would be living in a place called theColumbias.
Nope, America was named, probably, after an Itallian man observing probing missions for the Spanish Crown named Amerigo Vespucci. His name was put on some maps that he brought back after a bunch of expeditions on SOUTH America (he was the one who “found” Brazil and claimed it for the crown according to the Treaty of Tordesillas). HE never even landed on North America, and he was doing this a decade after Columbus. SO there is no reason that we should not be celebrating “Vikings kind of discovered Canada” day, or even “There was already an indigenous population here when other people showed up” Day.
Lastly, Let me speak to the fact that we teach our kids about Columbus day as a celebration. We are teaching these kids to celebrate the landing of a man who routinely kidnapped people out of their villages to act as guides, savagely beating and whipping them unless they did as they were told. They kidnapped women to be used as slaves at their camps and children to use a human shield. Columbus and his men stole, burned and raped their way across a landscape that was increasingly – with good reason – hostile to their presence. Teaching that to your kids is like teaching them that it isok to mix Rum, Tequila and cheap beer in the same night… It’s just irresponsible.
While I could use this as an excuse to go off on my diatribe about the importance of teaching accurate history from updated sources in our schools, I think I’ll save that for another day. Let’s just keep on Celebrating holidays based on fairy tales so that they grow up to write blogs expressing their bitterness at the lack of quality inherent in their education…
