Why Juneteenth is better than Columbus Day

In the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests, our local county government made Juneteenth an official holiday. This was followed by the federal government declaring the same thing starting in 2021.

But in Franklin County, Ohio there was a parallel decision to delete Columbus Day from the official county holiday calendar. Juneteenth would be a new holiday but Columbus Day would be removed as a sort of “trade,” in part to avoid the appearance of “government fat cats” getting an extra paid holiday, but also to snub the pseudo-explorer Columbus, who’s fallen out of favor in recent decades — even in the Ohio city that bears his name. It was both a practical and symbolic swap. But the federal government didn’t do the same—Columbus Day remains.

I’d only heard the word “Juneteenth” a couple times in my entire life prior to it becoming an official national holiday, probably mostly because I’m a white middle-aged man and news of this historic date hadn’t reached me yet. If Juneteenth was taught in school—for me, decades ago—then I missed it. But once I learned more about it, I was impressed. It’s a good national holiday.

Indeed, if it were up to me, federal, State, and local authorities would all do what we did in central Ohio—walk away from Columbus Day and embrace Juneteenth. Permanently. Why?

Juneteenth is about an accomplishment and our aspirations

Juneteenth celebrates something America actually did. It celebrates an intentional and moral change we made within ourselves, to begin to correct a past wrong, to make our country a little better. To move us one step close to the ideals we laid out in our founding documents.

By contrast, Columbus Day celebrates a foreigner that didn’t even achieve what we ostensibly celebrate. He didn’t “discover America” in 1492. Indeed, these lands didn’t need “discovering” by an Italian funded by Spain, partly because there were already people here, but mostly because other Europeans set foot in the “new world” hundreds of years before Columbus. Additionally, for several years after 1492 Columbus led multiple violent expeditions into the Caribbean with conquest and resource extraction as the goal. His own “son” was taken from a Native community in what is now the Bahamas, dragged back to Spain, was “adopted” under Spanish law, and renamed Diego. That’s… not great.

But even more salient to my point… was Columbus really part of our history? I suppose if you squint your eyes and use your imagination, you can see it. But with an unflinching historical eye, we can’t see him as part of U.S. history. He’s the dinosaur that roamed the Earth before warm-blooded mammals. He’s from a different geological era. Columbus Day celebrates, at best, a Spanish or Italian event.

Juneteenth is uniquely American

If slavery is one of the original sins of America, then Juneteenth is symbolic of our attempt at confession and desire for redemption. Normal Americans wouldn’t create a holiday celebrating slavery. But a date that celebrates the formal emancipation of slaves? Yeah, that sounds good. Sure, the emancipation didn’t happen overnight. And we live with the aftereffects of slavery to this day. But the original sin had to stop somewhere, and June 19th was as good a day as any to make that change.

There are other uniquely American holidays, of course. Labor Day celebrates the accomplishments of the labor movement in the U.S. in the early 20th century, which fundamentally transformed employer / employee relations. And of course Memorial Day and Veterans Day holidays celebrate military service and sacrifice across all of American history. (Yes, other countries have similar remembrances, but those are ours.) In the postmodern era we’ve added MLK Day, still trying to bend the moral arc of our history toward justice. Of course there’s also Independence Day which is about as American as you can get.

Yes, we have other holidays that are less American — like Christmas or New Year’s — because they are religious or simply calendar-based. Thanksgiving is another one that feels uniquely American, but its roots are from nearly 200 years before the Declaration of Independence. (Plus, Canada has a Thanksgiving, too.)

So bring on Juneteenth. Bring on more holidays that celebrate the times when we chose to move the American experiment forward, when we righted a wrong, when we lived up to our ideals.

Official holidays are a chance to take a break in our work-obsessed culture. But they can do double-duty, reminding us of our beliefs and reinforcing the positive parts of our mythology.