I anticipate that I will be demonized very shortly, but I have to play the bad guy here and ask--
How seriously does anybody take this holiday anyway?
I am enjoying my days off from the Army, to be sure, but I cannot say that the name Christopher Columbus inspires any great sentiment in my heart (along the lines of say, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln).
I see him as a opportunist who: (a) did not actually discover America and was certainly not the only person exploring this area of the world during his lifetime; (b) contributed nothing whatever to our cultural or political heritage; and (c) set out in service of the interests of the Spanish Crown, whose imperial designs remained at least a minor threat to U.S. interests throughout the first 120 year or so of our nation's existence.
None of this makes him a bad person but I see nothing that makes his life more worth celebrating than the life of any other European mariner hunting fame and fortune at that time.
If Americans are going to dedicate a holiday to a foreigner, I could see plenty of more compelling candidates. How about a Winston Churchill day? Or a Mother Theresa day? Or maybe a Lech Walesa day?
There are a lot of federal holidays that could/should be eliminated.
The only reason I think Columbus Day should remain a federal holiday, at this point, is that eliminating it would be a surrender to the groups that have been demonizing him, protesting at every parade.
But, I don't see why we should add a replacement holiday for a foreigner who had very little to do with the U.S. or the discovery of it at all, like Churchill or Mother Theresa, as important to the world as they might have been.