It’s a rant. I admit it.
The key upon which my schedule today depended was access to county offices. But it’s Columbus Day… However, not being Italian, I didn’t know or care so I drove an hour through traffic and arrived to find empty parking lots and a locked building. (rats!)
Columbus Day, Martin L. King Day and other ethnic holidays should not be an excuse to close government offices and give workers a day off at tax payer expense. St. Patrick’s Day is not a bank/county holiday and neither is Halloween (witch holiday). I don’t know of any business outside government and banks that takes Columbus Day off. I realize that in parts of the country, there are Columbus Day parades, but not in my part.
I have nothing against Italians. Adrienne may be preparing to scorch me for suggesting that Columbus Day shouldn’t be a government holiday – but it shouldn’t. Every Sunday of the year is a Catholic feast day dedicated to one saint or another. The government doesn’t give employees Easter off work, but Columbus Day — sure. There are something like 58 Indian (red dot, not feather) holidays per year, each dedicated to a different god. But we don’t celebrate one of those. 
Let’s face it, some people like to celebrate “their” holiday. That’s why vacation time was invented. I don’t celebrate Kwanza and I don’t dance naked under the moon at the solstice in celebration of whatever they celebrate. But here I am, stuck celebrating Columbus Day. The ethnic food on MLK Day is chicken and watermelon. It’s cabbage and corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day. I guess I’ll have a pizza for dinner and do it up right.
Of course, there were no tomatoes in Europe before Columbus (an Italian sailing under a Spanish flag) “discovered” the same land mass that the Vikings, Irish monks and who knows how many others had already “discovered”. Thus, putting it in perspective, the discovery of corn (meal that goes on the pizza oven’s deck) and tomatoes (which make pizza taste better)  does constitute a reason for me to celebrate. However, it still ended up being a wasted day from a standpoint of commerce.

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21 COMMENTS

  2. Oh my. I'm gonna get the hell out of here before Adrienne shows up and goes ballistic on your ass. Good luck, LL! I hope you survive her wrath, but she's not your usual Italian cutie, as you know.

  3. Well, if you were least little bit up on the times you'd know that it's now Indigenous People Day in more and more places. Spokane jumped on that stupid band wagon today. So I ask you back – should government buildings be closed on Indigenous People Day? And how far back do we have to go to find the very first indigenous people?

    I'm not a big fan of Cristoforo Colombo Day, but I do admire the person of Cristoforo. I guess it's a big deal back east. And I'm certainly no fan of government employees taking every opportunity to take the day off.

    And for Catholics, just about every day of year is dedicated to one saint or another (sometimes two on one day.) We don't save them for Sunday. We fling them about like confetti at a birthday party. Today is the feast of St. Francis Borgia, Confessor (a semi-double feast) as opposed to a:
    d1cl – double of first class
    d2cl – double of second class
    dm – double major feast
    d – double feast
    sp – simple feast
    v – vigil
    f – ferial day; no feast appointed

    Enjoy your pizza. 😉

  4. Beat you to it, Grunt. To what I am sure is your great disappoint, I did not go all kamikaze on LL. Instead, I feel his pain. Deeply.

    Okay – just sort of deep.

    I loathe government employees (most, not all) and banks are also on my sh*t list, so I've had this crapola happen to me and royally tick me off.

  5. Indian (feather) Day would be about as meaningful to me as one of the red dot Indian's god's days. The Catholics have the whole feasting thing down to a science, but they've had a long time to work out the fine print.

  6. I expect that at some point free speech on the Internet will explode, but at the moment all of the progs are more concerned about their e-mail being made public (hahahaha)

  10. Meh -you say tomatoes, I say tomatoes…I have absolutely no sympathy for you, LL, getting all het up about a free excuse for celebrations. I'm disappointed I didn't know there was some sort of reason to "celebrazione del partito!" Aint nothing shut over here in HUGEston. Anyway, you should have rang them first – that's what mobile phones were invented for. Now what you do is take a leaf out of my book and get yourself a nice bottle of Barolo, some deep fried mozzarella balls, a Chicago deep dish pizza and a great big bowl of Tiramisu (which means "pick me up" in Italian and might just do that for ya) followed by a good old film like Goodfellas or Scarface and a couple of Amaretto chasers. I'm telling ya, you'll be over it in minutes 🙂

  11. And they STILL have to cycle some saints out of the rotation to make room for new ones. And poor St. Michael, patron of warriors, police and bad-asses, doesn't even have a major feast anymore. That's a damn shame.

  16. Maybe I'll drive through Popeye's chicken and buy something to compensate – and eat a banana in honor of Harambe and Barack, who the Russians say, loves bananas.

  17. Aftermath: The pizza was delicious and I think that it caused my daughter (9 months pregnant) to go into labor. I'm home watching my young granddaughters. It remains to be seen how that all works out tonight.

  18. I never realized how much of a push-back there is on Columbus Day, such that the feather indians (as opposed to red-dot) are trying to culturally appropriate it away from the Eye-talions. Maybe the Indians (red-dot) will try and culturally appropriate Kwanzaa? Who knows where this might lead? Maybe the Africans will push to take over St. Patrick's Day in the name of Harambe (dicks-out) and social justice?

  19. I love St. Jude. The biggest mistake of the Novus Ordo Mass was the removal of the Prayer to St. Michael. It's a beautiful and timely prayer and needed now more than ever.

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