When is columbus day weekend 2017

Happy Columbus Day. Honor our heritage. Many Italians who migrated to the U. In , 11 Italians were lynched in New Orleans by a mob that held them responsible for the death of a police official. At the end of the s, Italians began to link themselves more with Columbus. Italian-American businessman and newspaper owner Generoso Pope was among those who worked to get Columbus Day recognized as a federal holiday in Indigenous Peoples Day began to gel as an idea before the th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the Americas.

Many places that have adopted Indigenous Peoples Day since then, including Alaska, have sizable Native American populations. A few cities have compromised. Five black members voted to rename the holiday, and eight white members voted against it, following a debate that devolved into shouting. When this occurs, state employees do not get a day off on the second Monday of October. Instead, they get the Friday after the fourth Thursday of November as a holiday.

Many businesses and shops are open in states that don't have Columbus Day as a public holiday. Schools are not required to close but check with your school district or school calendar on Columbus Day school holiday closures.

The same goes for post offices - check with your local post office. Since Columbus Day falls on Monday, it is one of the public holidays in the United States that always create a long weekend. Christopher Columbus is often portrayed as the first European to sail to the Americas. He is sometimes portrayed as the discoverer of the New World. However, this is controversial on many counts.

There is evidence that the first Europeans to sail across the Atlantic were Viking explorers from Scandinavia. Berkeley in California was the first to recognise the day in place of Columbus Day, but more and more towns do so every year, with 23 new locales observing Indigenous People's Day for the first time in The date Indigenous People's Day is held on varies slightly every year however and, in , America's states and towns face a stark choice as both holidays fall on the same day.

In a moment when the US is tackling tough questions regarding its attitude to race and reassessing the darker aspects of its history - in the age of Black Lives Matter and Confederate flag-bearing white supremacists rallying in Charlottesville, Virginia - the debate over the future of Columbus Day couldn't be more timely. Native Americans remain an important voice in US society and the Sioux's recent struggle to oppose an oil pipeline running through the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota only serves to highlight their ongoing plight.

If that monument is toppled, Columbus Day itself could soon follow. Every October, grateful Americans get a day off work to, ostensively, celebrate the life of explorer Christopher Columbus. The explorer was originally credited with discovering America, but centuries of research have roundly debunked this claim. Columbus is now holds the slightly less-exciting title of being the first European to explore America since the Vikings in the 11th century. So why do people across the US celebrate a man who never even set foot in North America — much less discovered it?

The answers, below, are complicated. Columbus was an Italian explorer who set sail for America on 12 October, The voyage was commissioned by Spanish King Ferdinand, as his wife, Queen Isabella, for the purpose of finding a western sea route to Asia.

Instead of finding in Asia, however, Columbus found himself in the modern-day Bahamas. Geographic calculations were a little less reliable in the 15th century.