Myth Informed

Pardon me if I am not in the mood to celebrate Columbus Day today. I know what you are thinking: Hey, when you are retired, every day is a holiday. Or, Perhaps you speculate that I am a bit dejected because I had the misfortune of watching losing performances by BOTH the Red Sox and the Patriots yesterday on TV.
While these are indeed valid observations on your part, they are not the reason for my non-celebratory mood. I am bummed-out by too much information.
One of the prevalent myths of my youth was the celebration of the birthday of of a valiant explorer seeking to find an efficient trade route to the East. While the rest of the world thought the world was pancake flat, Christopher Columbus persuaded the royals of Spain to subsidize his crazy idea of heading West to end-up in the East.In 1492, with his trusty ships, The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, he left Spain and did not fall off the edge of the Earth. He ended-up in the Caribbean. Thinking he had found the West Indies, he claimed discovery of a New World, called the indigenous peoples "Indians" showed them how to cook turkey in a deep fryer and traded a few beads in exchange for New Amsterdam.
(Ok, I never got good grades in history but I got most of the story right.)
It always seemed like a pretty good story to me. Courageous explorer, hero, visionary. Noble stuff.

But, now we discover that he was not such a nice guy. He was a self-serving tyrant (much like many of my former bosses). He did not prove the world was round since he did not actually find India (so the earth could technically have still been flat). Besides, it turns out that the flat-earth myth was invented in the 19th century by malevolent historians. During Columbus' time, scientists were well-aware that the earth was round. We were never taught that the Columbus agenda included bringing the gift of Christianity to the heathen, and that he subsequently gave the poor natives the most unwanted gift: smallpox (in return, sailors brought a nice little thank-you gift from the New World - syphilis which was hitherto unknown in Spain. You can google all these facts if you want. I find it depressing to learn that this fine hero of my youth was really wrong (and lost) most of the time.

Some modern descendants of the original inhabitants of the New World refuse to acknowledge Columbus as a hero and do not observe his birthday as a holiday. They decry the fact that this should be considered a day for Americans to celebrate. Perhaps I should go to the Casino today to say thank you for giving us New York.