Why Columbus Day?

Today is Columbus Day. Well technically yesterday was Columbus Day and today is Columbus Day Observed. It always drives me crazy when the government decides it can randomly change the date of a holiday in order to conform to a workday. I think that frustrates me because the only reason that they move the holiday is so that they get a day off from work. That is like putting my kids in charge of monitoring the cookie level in the cookie jar.

No matter how good their intentions I can guarantee that the cookies will be distributed in such a way that they will get the most while the rest of us will get a subset of the total available cookies. The fact that I had to get up this morning and go to work while the postal service, retail banking, and government workers were able to sleep in has not endeared me to Columbus Day Observed. But that’s not the only issue I have with Columbus Day.

I just don’t get how we could make this a holiday. I mean what exactly was Christopher Columbus’ major achievement? He and his buddies were looking to make a road trip because Spain in 1492 just wasn’t that much fun. They heard there were so great parties and food in China and India so they got themselves a sugar momma that would finance a road trip. They promised Isabella that they would make it a short trip and that they would bring her back something nice; typical guy thing.

Then the boys loaded up the boats and took off. Like most guys they looked at the map and quickly decided that there had to be a short cut that the map guy was saving for himself. So they threw out the maps and turned in the exact opposite direction of where they should have been going. I’m sure it wasn’t too long until they realized that they had no clue where they were going.

In typical guy fashion, instead of stopping and asking for directions they just kept going. And when they finally landed what did Columbus do? He told everyone that this is where he meant to go. Columbus went on to suggest that he “discovered” this new place. Problem with that of course was there were already people there; just a slight detail he overlooked.

So basically what we have is a holiday that celebrates a man’s tendency to get lost, not ask for directions, then claim victory when things didn’t go his way. They should just change the name of this to “Married Guy’s Day”. I go through this every day. The difference between me and Columbus; I know the earth is flat but that’s a whole other story.