Not all federal holidays are created equal. Next Monday, Oct. 12, is Columbus Day, and though it’s a federal holiday like Christmas or New Year’s Day, it’s rarely treated like one.
According to data from the Society for Human Resource Management last year, only six holidays are widely accepted as paid days off: Christmas, Independence Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving. So unless you fall into a few job categories—government offices and many banks are closed, the Postal Service doesn’t deliver mail—you probably have to show up to work on Monday.
Columbus Day belongs in a category that might be considered second-tier holidays, in which a sizable portion of employees get the day off, but the majority of us are expected to work like normal. Of all these days, Columbus Day gets the least respect. Whereas slightly more than one third of organizations are closed on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and President’s Day, and 22% are shuttered on Veterans Day, only 14% are closed on Columbus Day. And the idea that Columbus Day should be a paid day off at all is on the wane: In 2011, for instance, SHRM data indicated that 16% of organizations were closed in honor of the holiday.
In the early 1990s. Congress planned a “Quincentennial Jubilee” in 1992 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ Oct. 12 landing on the Bahamas. The festivities were to have sent a replica Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria sailing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in a fatuous re-enactment of the Italian explorer’s “discovery of America,” but Native American leaders joined with liberals and environmentalists to protest the celebration. Corporate sponsors never materialized, and the voyage was canceled. The same year, Berkeley, Calif., renamed the holiday “Indigenous People’s Day” in recognition of the civilizations that were nearly wiped out in the centuries following Columbus’ arrival. In most other places, Columbus Day simply withered over the years, with the political controversy serving as cover for employers to deny workers a paid vacation day.
Perhaps the holiday’s lowest moment since 1992 came in 2009, at the height of the recession. That’s the year Baltimore and Philadelphia canceled their long-running Columbus Day parades and California dropped the holiday as a paid day off for government workers—citing budget woes, not ethical misgivings.
Native American Life, 90 Years After 'Official Citizenship'
An Oglala Lakota man horseback rides on family land on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in S.D., Nov. 5, 2012.Aaron Huey—National Geographic Society/CorbisTourists in specially designed vehicles enjoy the view on a tour of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in southeastern Utah, May 16, 2014. Robert Alexander—Getty ImagesThe ruins of a once-popular stop on historic Route 66, the Santo Domingo Indian Trading Post, awaits restoration, Santo Domingo Pueblo, N.M., Aug. 2012.Robert Alexander—Getty ImagesA painting of a Native American chief wearing a Plains Indian headdress adorns the abandoned Big Chief gas station on the Zia Pueblo in northern New Mexico, Dec. 2012. Robert Alexander—Getty ImagesSharon Brokeshoulder and her daughter Audrey Brokeshoulder, contestants in the Native American Clothing Contest at Santa Fe Indian Market, pose for photos in Santa Fe, N.M. on August 22, 2011.Robert Alexander—Getty ImagesKaylon Wood, 15, waits for a tribal ceremony to begin as he was taking part in a Pow Wow at the Sac and Fox Nation annual event in Stroud, Okla. on July 30, 2012.Michael S. Williamson—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesThe Rosebud Reservation has casinos as a source of income for the tribe, it does not benefit from the Keystone Pipeline because the pipeline company found it too difficult to reach an agreement with the tribe, Rosebud, S.D., July 30, 2012. Michael S. Williamson—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesTribal police officer Jacob Gadowaltz leads a drug search of a vehicle on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in New Town, N.D., Aug. 2, 2013.Alexandra Hootnick—Zuma PressOfficer Jesse Hernandez talks to a prisoner in the Pascua Yaqui tribal jail in the Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation, Ariz. on March 18, 2014.Jahi Chikwendiu—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesThis eagle had been euthanized and the body will not be sent out with an order. All useable parts of the eagle bodies from wherever they fall are kept so Native American religious practitioners have the requisite eagle feathers, talons, etc. for their ceremonies in Colo., Aug. 21, 2009.Joe Amon—Denver Post/Getty ImagesThe grounds of the Casino Del Sol Hotel, hinting of an oasis, overlooks the poverty stricken residential part of the tribal land on the Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation, Ariz., March 18, 2014
Jahi Chikwendiu—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesOverview of the Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation, Ariz., March 20, 2014.
Jahi Chikwendiu—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesKids play in the street on the Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation, Ariz. on March 18, 2014. Jahi Chikwendiu—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesKevin True Blood, 35, of Porcupine, S.D., shoots off his pistol in celebration of the Wounded Knee Liberation Anniversary on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Feb. 27, 2014. Chris Huber—APResidents from Pine Ridge Reservation, S.D., in various states of inebriation outside a store located immediately across the border in Whiteclay, Neb., Feb. 17, 2012.Nicole Bengiveno—The New York Times/ReduxJohn Parsons holds a traditional lacrosse stick at the Onondaga Nation. Living uneasily among Americans, many Iroquois still believe they're fighting for their own identity, Onondaga Nation, N.Y., July 19, 2010. Heather Ainsworth—APA Lakota Honoring Ceremony is held for Johnson Holy Rock, foreground, at an annual treaty council meeting held on the Pine Ridge reservation in Pine Ridge, S.D., Feb. 18, 2012. Nicole Bengiveno—The New York Times/ReduxAutumn Two Bulls, who has taken her children to Whiteclay to witness the scene of intoxicated people loitering along the street, and explained to the children that those on the streets were teachers of what not to do, with one of her three children on the Pine Ridge reservation in S.D., Feb. 19, 2012.Nicole Bengiveno—The New York Times/ReduxA young boy plays on a swing set in a park on the Hualapai Indian Reservation in Peach Springs, Ariz., Feb. 28, 2012. Robert Galbraith—ReutersChildren play in the yard of a home on the Hualapai Indian Reservation in Peach Springs, Ariz., Feb. 28, 2012. Robert Galbraith—ReutersStudents eat breakfast at Mahnomen Elementary School in Mahnomen, Minn., Sept. 26, 2013. Dan Koeck—ReutersA member of the Hualapai Tribe listens during a gathering at the Hualapai Tribal Forestry Department on the Hualapai Indian Reservation in Peach Springs, Ariz., Feb. 28, 2012. Robert Galbraith—ReutersA U.S. flag with an image of an American Indian horse rider flies next to a roadside jewellery stand on the Navajo Reservation, by a remote section of the Grand Canyon near Little Colorado River, Ariz., June 23, 2013.
Mike Blake—Reuters
