Sometime in the early 1480s, after returning from a trip to a Portuguese trading fortress on the West African coast, Columbus began to seek support for his idea that Asia could be reached faster and easier by sailing straight across the Atlantic Ocean, instead of having to sail around the southern coast of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. In his early twenties, he worked as a mariner on merchant ships in the Mediterranean. As Ronald Reagan remarked in a 1988 speech, Columbus Day has become a day “ to celebrate not only an intrepid searcher but the dreams and opportunities that brought so many here after him.”Ĭhristopher Columbus (originally Cristoforo Colombo, 1451–1506) was born into a working-class family in Genoa, Italy. Immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries rallied around the immigrant Columbus. In the late 18th century, Americans began to see Columbus as somewhat of a mythic founding figure by the 1830s, he was seen as an archetype of the American ideal: bold, adventurous, innovative. And yet, in the 500 years since Columbus’s sighting, the day has become distinctly American.

Columbus Day-the day we celebrate Christopher Columbus’s historic discovery of the Americas in 1492-is a most unusual American holiday, as it commemorates an event that occurred well before the United States was a nation.

Celebrating christopher columbus day