Columbus Day

Columbus Day isn't particularly celebrated in most of the country, much less Davis. Usually it only affects banks, some small businesses, the post office and other government jobs. Columbus Day is the 12th of October, though some places attach it to the nearest weekend. Students of the Davis Joint Unified School District do not get the day off. Some people think Davis should develop some sort of tradition to celebrate this mostly uncelebrated national holiday.

Due to controversy over the person whom the holiday is named for (some people blame his actions for the genocide of Native Americans over the next few hundred years), many people have strong feelings regarding this holiday despite the relative lack of observation.

This page scores high on the lameness factor.

2005-10-08 20:34:54   Not to make light of any death, but should we be a little more objective about this holiday? I mean, I am the son of immigrants, and the way this page is written, my existence and my life as it has been has been dependent on genocide... —PaulAmnuaypayoat

Well, yeah, it has. Fuck mincing words. TobinJones

2007-03-25 21:22:47   The genocide of Native Americans? Come on. I've heard of the Bloody Island Massacre too, but I also know that people living here before Columbus appeared were doing it to each other long before that just because it is what people in groups do to other groups of people. —NickSchmalenberger

2007-03-25 22:03:50   Can we revisit the neutrality of this page? I mean, there are a lot of economic (as in not social justice related) reasons for not formally celebrating Columbus Day. As an example, my company works on that day because all of the freight carriers work on that day too... —PaulAmnuaypayoat

2007-03-25 22:12:28   Feel free to make any edits you wish. The anti-Columbusian bias saddens me. —JosephBleckman

2007-03-25 23:08:45   Well, as far as that goes I don't think this page has anything specific to Davis at all. Unless Davis actually does something special for Columbus Day, such as if somebody has actually done any of these "traditions" on more than one such day, this page doesn't need to exist at all. —NickSchmalenberger

2007-03-25 23:26:21   As an agnostic, I could complain about the presence of Christmas on the wiki but I understand having a page a page for the holiday. Here, we have just as an absurd of a holiday, with suggestions for ways of celebrating. Chill out and leave it be. Now, in honor of Jospeph being saddened by Columbus bashing, here is an excerpt for his October 11, 1492 journal. The day he landed: It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses. Sounds like a great guy to me, capture 'em and enslave 'em. —RobRoy

2007-03-26 00:27:41   The Christmas page actually has a lot of material specific to Davis, and provides many examples of the sort of thing this page needs, so thanks for pointing it out Rob. Also, I largely agree with you about "Christmas" abstractly, but the fact is there is material about Davis that is also about Christmas. Does such material exist related to Columbus Day? Two Columbus Days have passed since these hypothetical traditions were posted here and there isn't any evidence of the actual performance of these acts, so I find the existence of Davis traditions for Columbus Day questionable. Nice try, Daviswiki should be about Davis. —NickSchmalenberger

• I actually claimed the land of Sweden in the name of Emperor Norton last Columbus Day. I then proceeded to award Nobel Prizes to several of my professors. —BrentLaabs

2007-03-26 13:44:35   Wonderful, thank you Brent for your contribution. Please integrate it into the article. —NickSchmalenberger

2007-03-27 01:55:07   Ok, I may be the guy that brought Jason Webley to Davis but I had no part in making this page. That said, taking the random things list off the page is dumb. The list has several links to other wiki pages - in case you did not know this: the more links in a wiki, the better. I'm aggitated by the johnny come latelys to the wiki that don't recognize that the website is for fun as well. Give Brent a chance, maybe next Columbus Day something entertaining will happen at the post office. Also, I cannot believe people are being genocide deniers on the matter of Native Americans. Columbus did begin the European migration to the Americas, which directly caused the genocide of the native populations. I know the blood on our hands may be hard to deal but stop being wusses and accept it. Either that, or go back to kindergarten where that ignorance is accepted. —RobRoy

• Just because Columbus found some Caribbean islands and was somewhat a jerk administrating those islands does not mean he is morally or historically responsible for the genocide of Native Americans. The genocide that one usually speaks of is the result of intentional and unintentional use of germ warfare on Native Americans by all European colonizers who came to America. Second, Americans and people of Spanish heritage today are not responsible for what happened hundreds of years ago before they were born. I am not saying Columbus was a saint, his Wikipedia page explains who he is, but it seems a lot of people use his image to concentrate all of their European History frustration. The page looks fine now. —SteveOstrowski

2007-03-27 10:34:22   I don't see why there's all this hostility toward him. He embodies the idea that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and has solved dozens of murders. —CraigBrozinsky

• You are referring to the Columbus Murder Mystery Dinners? —SteveOstrowski
• "And just where were you on the morning of October 12th, 1492, Signor Columbus? You say you were playing bocce, but if the teethmarks on this chunk of Asiago match your famous overbite, we can prove you instigated a mass genocide at San Salvador. Your fatal flaw, Signor Columbus, was your affinity for cheese." —CraigBrozinsky