We celebrated Columbus Day when I was a child. These days here are alternative theories about who "discovered" the American continent. The Celts, the Norse, or the Chinese, for instance.
We're sensitized to the idea that there were Native Americans here for centuries before anyone "discovered" America, and that the idea that a European discovered the continent is part of a marketing ploy or a mythology that this was a vast country for the taking, absent of any people with land rights.
I once won a Columbus Day poster contest. I was proud of my crayoned images of Spanish with stripped pantaloons pants and Spanish flag on the beach. I was given the prize of one brand new dollar, which I still have.
I once met a man who was so into Christopher Columbus that he went to the very beach that Columbus landed on as a vacation one year. He is the last person - the only person since I won that poster contest as a grade-schooler - who got to see my poster.
These days there's a more than a suggestion - a whole book - on Christopher Columbus as from a family named Colon and Jewish. Don't know how he got that Christian - Greek given name Christopher.
