This week, there is a special day on the calendar to honor the man who was among the first explorers to come to the New World.
Of course, we are referring to Oct. 9, the day known as Leif Erikson Day.
Erikson and his Norsemen came to the Americas around 400 years before Christopher Columbus accidentally found his way here. Erikson is celebrated around the world for his contributions to opening up the world at the dawn of a new millennium.
We have many influences in our daily lives from Norse culture, including the middle three days of the week being named after Norse gods. Tuesday evolved from Tyr’s Day, Wednesday is a modification of Woden’s Day (Norse spelling of Odin) and Thursday is actually Thor’s Day, named long before the Avengers movies came out.
Erikson even has a statue in Duluth, Minnesota, and his day is honored in parts of the midwest and northwest where descendants of Scandinavian countries settled throughout the last 1,000 years or so. But he does not have a federal holiday named for him.
That honor belongs to Columbus, for whom we take a day off banking and school but we can never quite agree on his place in our history and culture.
More than a dozen states do not acknowledge Columbus Day, and some of them have replaced the holiday with “Indigenous People’s Day” because of Columbus’ purported colonizing ways.
It is perhaps the most ridiculous holiday on the calendar, and one wonders why it still exists if we cannot even agree on whether we should be celebrating or whom we are honoring.
If states are all going to break out on our own on these holidays, why can we not celebrate Jimmy Carter’s birthday at this time of year? President Carter just turned 98 on Oct. 1, and that seems like a far more worthy person after whom to name a holiday.
Carter is still building Habitat for Humanity houses at his age, and he is without a doubt on the Mt. Rushmore of all-time great Georgians.
It is time to scratch Columbus Day off the list, whether it’s because of his dubious place in history or because of the general pointlessness of “celebrating” when most people do not know the first thing about the man.
He sailed the ocean blue and all of that, but Carter is a true hero we can see right in front of us. And he was never 400 years too late to anything.