close
close

first Drop

Com TW NOw News 2024

    • When is Columbus Day in 2024? What you need to know about the upcoming holiday
    news

    When is Columbus Day in 2024? What you need to know about the upcoming holiday

    Vaseline Posted on

    The second Monday in October marks Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day in the United States.

    In 2022, President Joe Biden issued an Indigenous Peoples Day proclamation, but Columbus Day is still celebrated as a federal holiday. Pew Research research in 2023 shows the public, paid holiday is still commemorated as Columbus Day in 16 US states

    But more states and cities are beginning to embrace Indigenous Peoples Day in place of Columbus Day, potentially marking a celebration of transition as some groups push to refocus the day on the explorers that have been celebrated for decades.

    Now that it’s Columbus Day this year, here’s what you need to know about the nearly century-old national holiday.

    When is Columbus Day?

    Both Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day fall on Monday, October 14. Both holidays usually take place on the second Monday of October every year.

    Who was Christopher Columbus?

    Christopher Columbus is commonly known as the man who discovered America, but people like Leif Eriksson had explored the continent and several Native American tribes had lived here for centuries.

    Reynaldo Morales, an assistant professor at Northwestern University, is a descendant of the Quechua peoples of Peru and lectures in the media on American Indian and indigenous peoples’ issues, and addresses environmental issues facing indigenous communities around the world.

    He told USA TODAY in 2023 that Columbus and his men brought a “magnitude of violence that reached levels of genocide unprecedented on the great American continent before the Europeans.”

    Here are some examples of the atrocities Columbus committed, as compiled by Philadelphia Magazine:

    • Columbus cut off the hands of about 10,000 natives in Haiti and the Dominican Republic for failing to provide gold every three months.
    • He punished minor offenses by cutting off noses and ears.
    • Columbus and his crew hunted natives for sport and released them to hunting dogs to be torn apart.

    “We have no reason – just because we ignore these facts – to celebrate the legacy or figure of such a criminal,” Morales said.

    Do people still celebrate Columbus Day?

    Columbus Day is still a federal holiday, although some people argue that the holiday celebrates Italian heritage, while others say it glorifies the exploitation and genocide of indigenous peoples.

    About 29 states in the United States and Washington DC do not celebrate Columbus Day. About 216 cities have renamed or replaced the holiday with Indigenous Peoples Day, according to information from renamecolumbusday.org.

    Some states recognize Indigenous Peoples Day through proclamations, others consider it an official holiday.

    Why was Columbus Day celebrated?

    Although Columbus landed in America in 1492, Columbus Day was not celebrated as a federal holiday until 1937. The same year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress made it a federal holiday, largely due to lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal and charitable organization.

    The first observance of the day took place in 1792, when the New York Columbian Order known as Tammany Hall celebrated the 300th anniversary of the landing.

    A century later, in 1892, then-President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation encouraging Americans to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s landings.

    Contributors: Kinsey Crowley

    Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected] and follow him at X @fern_cerv_.

    Vaseline
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like