Oct. 12, not Oct. 10, is the traditional date for remembering Christopher Columbus. The federal government changed the holiday from Oct. 12 to the second Monday of October with the Uniform Holiday Act in 1971. Government offices, the majority of banks, and some other businesses in the United States close for Columbus Day, while in Latin American countries including Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, and Mexico also celebrate Columbus Day.

Columbus Day has been a federal holiday since 1937, but Italian-Americans have been celebrating Oct. 12 as Columbus Day since 1866, and Colorado observed it as a state holiday in 1905. Since 1920, the United States has been celebrating Columbus Day annually.

The definition of discovery given in a recent Campanile article denouncing Columbus day is, "to be the first, or the first of one’s group, to find, learn of or observe it." By this definition, Columbus did indeed discover America for Europe. The Asian nomads, Vikings, and an unmentioned 1421 Chinese expedition may have found, learned of, or observed America before Columbus, but Columbus is the first from his group, Renaissance Europe, to find, learn of, or observe America.

Columbus was not the first person to discover America, but his discovery is the one that had, by far, the most far-reaching political, social, and economic consequences over the entire world. The nomads arrived at some disputed date tens of thousands of years ago and formed various cultures in North America, while the Vikings founded a single colony that hardly lasted a decade. The Chinese may have founded colonies, but their achievements are still debated in the academic community. Columbus’s discovery of America led to widespread colonization by the major European powers, including Britain’s 13 North American colonies that later rebelled and formed the United States of America. Columbus does not deserve credit for indirectly founding the United States, but he does deserve credit for enabling others to do so. This in itself is sufficient reason to recognize Columbus Day.

Many try to castigate Columbus for his observation that the natives were technologically inferior by European standards, and that the Spanish could have easily conquered them. This is poor reasoning not to celebrate Columbus Day. Abraham Lincoln made the statement, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,” which by the above logic is a valid reason not to recognize Lincoln on President’s Day.

Columbus’s landfall in America did indeed lead to the unwitting spread of European diseases, most notably smallpox, and eventual warfare between the natives of Hispaniola and the Spanish; again, this is not a reason to eliminate Columbus Day. Blaming Columbus personally for the Spanish mistreatment of the natives, and suggesting Columbus is somehow responsible for the spread of diseases that he and the best and brightest minds of his time had exactly zero understanding of is ludicrous.

Only once did Columbus send the natives of Hispaniola into slavery, according to Keith Pickering’s Columbus Navigation page. Slavery was legal in Spain in 1492, provided the person was a prisoner of war awaiting ransom. Prisoner-slaves had a monetary value equal to their expected ransom, and therefore the 15th century Spanish bought and sold the "asset." When the Spanish captured a number of natives on Hispaniola as a result of warfare, Columbus sent them to Spain as slaves in accordance with the accepted standards of the time. However, King Fernando and Queen Isabella promptly sent them back, reasoning that there was no possibility of ransom for the natives in Spain, and Columbus never ventured into attempting to enslave natives again. It was Columbus’s successor, not Columbus, who established the encomienda system. If Columbus Day should not be celebrated because Columbus was associated with slavery, neither should George Washington be celebrated with President’s Day for his slave ownership.

Columbus did make errors when calculating the size of the globe, which convinced him that a voyage to Asia by his route was possible, and led to his belief that he had landed on islands off mainland Asia instead of a new continent. At the time, however, Europeans did not know that America even existed. Saying that Columbus does not deserve recognition because he had made a mathematical error and lacked the knowledge of America, as all of his peers did, is a sign of desperation among those who dislike Columbus.

Columbus was by not a perfect man by any measure. However, he did discover America for the Europeans, and his discovery is the one that led to many great things, and some things that were not so great. Columbus deserves recognition for that. If some liberals wish to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day for political reasons, let them. Do not take Columbus Day from the rest of us who understand his achievements, his failures, and the reason why we celebrate it.