Columbus Day in America is disappearing

I am a homeschooler.  I have a 3 year old turning 4 in December who is not eligible to start Kindergarten for another 2 years.  She is so intelligent that I have to do something to keep her mind occupied so her curiosity doesn't get her into trouble.  As a result the decision to homeschool her was made and we started Kindergarten curriculum this year.  My other kids all went to public schools.

Part of the Kindergarten curriculum is to introduce all the holidays and the motivation behind them.  As I was getting prepared to talk about Columbus Day and Christopher Columbus I went looking for possible events to take her to in order to make Christopher Columbus come alive rather than just doing stories and coloring pages.  To my dismay there was absolutely nothing planned in my area.  If you lived in Boston or New York you could find plenty but here in Virginia where I have Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown less than an hour away and two maritime museums as well, I found nothing.  Not even a speaker at a library.

Without Christopher Columbus we would not live where we do and yet more pomp and circumstance is given to St. Patrick's day and Cinco de Mayo and they aren't even federal holidays.  The only things that happen around Columbus Day in this area are state and federal closures, bank closures and Columbus Day sales. 

I get that for the native population, a small minority, Christopher Columbus's accidental stumble upon the America's was the beginning of their people being conquered, but even they now benefit from all that has transpired since then.  Yes there are many things in our history that we look back and find shameful from slavery to the trail of tears and Asian internment camps in World War II, but the fact remains we wouldn't have the United States of America the great melting pot of the world without Christopher Columbus.  Even if it wasn't him it would have been someone else and the results would have been the same.

Columbus Day is not a day that should be ignored or swept under the rug in order to not offend a small population in our country.  Honor should be paid where honor is due.  We have a lot to be thankful for and the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus is one of them.