As parents, one of our fundamental responsibilities is to help our children develop a sense of morality and to model the ideas and behaviors we value. All parents want to instill morals and principles that will last lifetimes and shape how our children interact with the world. While we do our best to take every opportunity to model good behaviors and values for our boys, we must
acknowledge that society will exert a powerful influence that we cannot entirely control. This is why a holiday like Columbus Day bothers us as parents.
Celebrating Columbus Day promotes the racist narrative that Europeans were civilizers of Indigenous peoples. We cannot in good conscience teach this to our children. Christopher Columbus also personally condoned the raping of women and child separation. Horrifically, these actions still occur today, so there is no rational way to confine them to the past. We want our boys to learn that such actions are morally reprehensible and simply unacceptable, and there are abundant opportunities in the headlines of the past few years for them to learn otherwise. Columbus Day should not be one more. There is no historical context that makes
such actions understandable, and we will never be okay with anyone implying to our children that excuses can be made for such atrocities.
In the United States, there are only a few holidays that close schools, and this makes those that do a large focus for our children. During the period leading up to a holiday, curiosity grows, children question why this day is different, and they ask about who or what we are honoring. Anyone who has spent time around small children knows the type of “why” questions they ask. When such questions relate to Veterans Day or Martin Luther King Jr Day, we know that teachers and parents alike can discuss the upcoming holiday in a way that affirms our values. In contrast, when Columbus Day approaches, we find ourselves celebrating a man we do not want to endorse as a role model for our boys.
Abandoning Columbus Day does not mean cancelling Columbus as a man or erasing his place in our collective history. History classes can and should continue to include lessons on Christopher Columbus and the arrival of Europeans in North America. He is a part of how our country came to be. While we detest many of his actions, Columbus will always be an important historical figure. However, his impact on history is not the metric we should use when deciding about this holiday. Continuing to celebrate Columbus Day necessarily frames him as a hero. The founding of our country is a complex story and one that our children should be taught in its entirety. Learning our collective history can be done in a way that acknowledges the past and affirms our values.
Wellesley, along with Massachusetts as a whole, has a long history of leading on issues of social justice, and this history is something of which we should all be truly proud. We hope that this issue will be one more source for that pride, both for ourselves, our community, and our boys. Fourteen states and numerous individual towns and cities across the United States have
already made the switch to Indigenous Peoples Day. In Greater Boston, this includes our neighboring communities, such as Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville. Wellesley should join these and many other towns in Massachusetts that have already made the switch. On the second Monday of October, Wellesley should celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day.
For our conscience and our children, please vote Yes on Question 1 on March 2, 2021.
Nathaniel and Arielle Langer
No doubt that history has some truly evil people. But we just can’t keep trying to erase it. So much of our history has dark origins. There will always be people affected, hurt, offended, and shocked by our ancestors actions. If you really look into the history of Thanksgiving day, you will also wonder why we continue to celebrate that. What really happened between the Wampanoags and the English settlers? You look it up. So many of the presidents we celebrate today were racist and many slave owners. George Washington had a complicated relationship with slavery. He owned enslaved people and worked on his land before they were finally freed. He had hypocritical policies against native Americans. As a landowner he constantly expanded his land with Native American land. He may have purchased some but he definitely claimed some and there were battles where he ordered the destruction of many indigenous communities when it helped his cause. This is all history that is out there. Should we get rid of Presidents’ Day next? My point is most of us know that most all the people we celebrate today have both good and really bad histories of atrocities. It’s certainly not fair that we exclude some celebrated days, but not others. That isn’t looking at equality for all like you claim you were looking for, by ridding of Columbus Day. Let’s leave things as is so that we can teach the generations to come our mistakes, instead of hiding them, and why it’s so important we continue to make positive change toward equality for all.
The Langers are wrong about Columbus.. he was friends with the native people and NEVER condoned the raping of girls and separating children… I spent years of research for my acclaimed book, Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem. It was the horrible men sent over after the first voyage who began those things… Ovando andBobadilla. Please read my book for accurate information. thank you. Carol Delaney