Indigenous Peoples’ Day aka Columbus Day

Proclamations

On October 11, 2024, President Biden issued a Proclamation on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Most of his proclamation rings true except the part,  “From day one, I have worked to include Indigenous voices…”  The verb worked is the sticking point.  Perhaps others have worked. Who knows?

To his credit, he is the first president to proclaim such a holiday as a replacement for Columbus Day, although Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not recognized as a holiday under U.S. Federal Law. Apparently presidents are allowed to proclaim holidays by putting a different name on top of a statutory holiday.

But our purpose here is not to quibble over President Biden’s motives or accomplishments. Unfortunately he also issued a much shorter Proclamation on Columbus Day, 2024. He obviously did not read our September 11, 2019 post about Columbus where we proposed that the purpose of National Holidays is to commemorate important events in our nation’s history.  Columbus was not important. He was not Italian.

Biden should have ignored Columbus Day.

As we previously opined, “Making Columbus Day a national holiday was a mistake. The best way to fix a mistake is to cancel the holiday, not rename it to celebrate the victims of European colonization.”

Purpose of Holidays

Statutory holidays are generally regarded as day(s) off work with pay, and banks and schools are closed. Other holidays are really mostly religious festivities like Easter Week, Chanukah, Rosh Hashanah, Carnival, Diwali, and Ramadan. Christmas in many Western nations is both a statutory and religious holiday.

Just because our national leaders proclaim a holiday in the U.S., it doesn’t necessarily mean they do it for the same reasons other nations celebrate their beloved holidays. In some instances our politicians are just pandering to constituents.

Italians got their day indirectly by adopting Columbus.

Ancient societies have celebrations that efficiently bring people together with long festivals. Chinese New Year lasts seven to fourteen days.  Everybody is off work for at least seven days.  It’s a grand party with fireworks, red lanterns, banquets, and parades.  Carnival in Brazil is the closest thing we can think of on our side of the ocean. We North Americans have a few holidays that reaffirm our national identity. Most are regarded by the general public as a just day off from work or a reason to go shopping.

Does the U.S. have a real cultural identity? It’s debatable, but one thing we have is a long history of being at war. Thus Veterans Day, November 11 is a day we can all come together to celebrate those who served.   Memorial Day reinforces our devotion to soldiers.

We are still a majority Christian nation. Thus Christmas is the premier holiday to bring the dwindling number of Christians together to think about our roots.

Our National Holidays

If we are willing to dump Columbus Day, shouldn’t we take a hard look at all eleven National Holidays?   Which ones should we keep?  Should we add more? Surely we should have a National Holiday every month. Sadly March, April, and August have no paid holidays. We need paid holidays every month to help us build a national identity. Immigration is good but immigrants continue, and correctly so, to observe their own traditional holidays while we offer them nothing in the way of alternatives. Maybe recent immigrants can get excited about the 4th of July.

It’s a paid holiday in the middle of summer with nice weather and fireworks.

Our paid National Holidays are listed below with our best guess as to why they should be holidays.

Suggestions for Additional Paid Holidays

Besides getting rid of Columbus day and making it permanently Indigenous Peoples’ Day, there are 3 months without paid federal holidays. Here are our suggestions:

• March – National Vietnam War Veterans Day to be observed on the last Friday of March so we can have a 3 day weekend.
• April 13 – Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday. If it falls on a Sunday, the observed holiday will be on Monday; if it falls on Saturday, observance can be on Friday. Again, another 3 day weekend.  Another popular April holiday is April 7, National Beer Day. We are not advocating that as a paid national holiday and trigger for a 3 day weekend because it is a day that can be freely celebrated year round.
• August.  August is a hard month to adopt current holidays as a national paid holiday. Lyndon Baines Johnson Day on August 27 is not even popular in Texas. Women’s Equality Day on the 26th doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. August 21, Senior Citizens Day is equally boring. Victory Day (VJ), the victory over Japan in WWII, is observed on September 2 in the U.S. but in Korea it’s celebrated on August 15th. The war was tragic and victory was welcome but now Japan is an ally and our lingering guilt about atomic bombs suggests we want to forget it more than remember it.  Purple Heart Day on August 7 would be acceptable except for John Kerry.  Look it up.Coast Guard Birthday, National Veep Day, Assumption of Mary, Statehood Day in Hawaii, Battle of Bennington Day, National Aviation Day, and National Waffle Day are equally uninspiring August holidays.  Apparently our history is so short that nothing too inspiring has happened in the U.S. in August.  Perhaps we should celebrate an important commercial conquest such as Coca Cola being sold for the first time in Britain on August 31, 1900. Maybe our August greatness awaits us in the future. Despite being a great American, and the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett’s birthday on August 30 is unlikely to gain  traction as an August National Holiday.So there we are. Out of ideas and inspiration. Maybe you can suggest a suitable paid national holiday for the USA.