Isn’t today Thanksgiving day in Canada?
Happy thanksgiving.
It’s also Leif Erikson Day in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Columbus Day is celebrated (by the winners) on Oct. 9 this year.
We always wait until Columbis Day Eve to decorate our Columbus Tree, then we sing Columbus carols and stay up until midnight and open our presents. The next day, we go to the Columbus Day buffet at the Ramada Inn, and then we take in the Living Landing, a tableau with live actors portraying Columbus presenting trinkets and smallpox to the indigenous population. Then we go home and watch It Used to be a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart as Christopher Columbus and Ward Bond as the chief of the Arawaks.
There’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned Columbus Day celebration to bring a tear of nostalgia to this gonzo’s eye.
It’s Columbus Day in the States, which my Indian friends refer to as “Invasion Day.”
Tom
Gobble gobble, eh?
Actually, I went to Swiss Chalet, but its the thought that counts. 
djm
I woke my kid (5 years old) up this morning and he asks “Is it a school day?” “Yup, it’s Monday” I reply.
“But it’s Columbus Day!” he lamented. I was a bit impressed he knew the holiday. So I tells him:
“My great grandparents were full blooded Comanche. No holiday for you. Get dressed.” 
I don’t think he found it as funny as I did.
Happy Thanksgiving.
As for Columbus Day, I’d go so far as to say it’s not all black and white. Certainly Columbus, and they who followed after, did some horrible things, but there were also advances on both sides of the Atlantic due to the contact.
You’re right Walden. It’s not all black and white. It’s just that the way most of us American school children were raised to view Columbus as some kind of iconic noble explorer–well, it’s natural that we’d feel a little cynical when we began to learn the rest of the story.
If it weren’t for Columbus, my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather might have stayed in Ireland, and I might actually know how to play my whistles without embarrassment now. Bah!
Or they might have all starved during the potato famine.
I’m just happy to have a day off- even though it will take us the rest of the week to catch back up with the mail.
I’ve often thought how ironic it is that we in America have a holiday for an Italian, commissioned by Spain to find India, who ran into Cuba. What that has to do with this country, I have no idea. It’s not even like Columbus was the first European to bump into North America!
My daughter’s school had last Monday off instead. They decided (rightly, I think), to take the day off on a holiday that a lot of their students actually observe (Yom Kippur).
Redwolf
I think the significance is, he was the one who really opened up the interchange.