Rediscovering Columbus Day Controversies

In fourteen hundred ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue

He didn’t get here first--that’s wrong--

But left a weekend three days long.

Those last two lines I made up.

The first two I remember from school days, along with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and a painting of Christopher Columbus in puffy sleeves and tights. He was standing on New World sands and unfurling a proclamation amid groveling natives who gaze up at him in the worshipful way that ABC stockholders regard Regis Philbin.

Not a bad year’s work for a sailor who blundered into the wrong continent and who still has several cities and a floating holiday named for him five centuries after his mistake.

Now we know that the Admiral of the Ocean Sea launched not only a mini-fleet but several centuries of wholesale mayhem on the new continent, as Europe exported a version of its own fractious and murderous self in the name of civilization.

Columbus Day is in play every day. It hangs on the wall calendar in every school that agonizes over dumping its Indian mascot, as Birmingham High in Van Nuys and Westlake High in Thousand Oaks have, as Stanford University did years ago, as San Diego State is considering now with its Aztec mascot and Monty Montezuma figure.

It eclipsed New Year’s Day in 1992, when the Rose Parade, which prefers to think of itself as having no politics (apart from gentlemanly boosterism), had to divvy up grand marshal honors between its choice, Columbus’ many-times-great-grandson, and Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, whose ancestor had a hand in walloping Custer at Greasy Grass Ridge.

Columbus, puffy sleeves and all, stands ghost-like at the elbow of California Native Americans when they protest that the Catholic Church might canonize and declare a saint’s day for Father Junipero Serra, who founded the California missions and in so doing destroyed Native Americans’ bodies to save their souls--and yet who himself came from a Mediterranean island that was successively conquered by Romans, Vandals, Normans, Muslims and Spaniards.

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Maybe holidays should have expiration dates, like cheese.

To renew them, you have to perform a quality check.

Take Thanksgiving as it is practiced. It has as much to do with pigskin as with turkey. We have football teams named Patriots and Giants but no Pilgrims. Thanksgiving is a day to rest up and carb up before sprinting into shopping season.

The Fourth of July is celebrated with ritual outdoor burnings of animal parts and the torching of Technicolor explosives.

And Columbus Day is chiefly observed by department store sales and a day off for employees of the government institutions that Columbus and later Europeans brought here.

Native Americans don’t much like Columbus Day. In Denver, they managed for nearly 10 years to stop Columbus parades, to the distinct fury of Italian Americans who say their heritage is being dissed.

The Norse aren’t too crazy about it either, inasmuch as Vikings got to North America 500 years before the admiral and they haven’t seen Leif Ericsson Day on the national calendar.

Let’s say Columbus Day has outlived itself. What would happen if it were shelved, and replaced with New World Day?

Would the Spanish recall their ambassador in protest? Would the Italian government stop selling us Prada backpacks and enforce some Quattrocento patent on pizza?

In retaliation, we could take back such New World blessings as tomatoes and silicone breast implants and tobacco. That’d show ‘em.

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Five centuries ago, one people who considered themselves superior and wise encountered a strange breed of men, and adjudged them retrograde and barbarian souls who didn’t smell too good, either.

That’s what Europeans thought of Native Americans--and it’s also what the Chinese thought of Europeans.

In the New World, they practiced human sacrifice. In the Old World, they castrated boys to sing soprano in operas. Who are the barbarians?

We were all conquerors; we were all conquered. The age of exploration was the age of exploitation. One man’s myth is another man’s poison. If, as we now think, we’re smart enough to know it, are we now smart enough to know better?

Oh, before I go, mark your calendars: on March 31, California will celebrate its first Cesar Chavez Day.

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Columnist Patt Morrison writes today for the vacationing Al Martinez. Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.