For some people in the US today we had a day off because of the Columbus Day holiday. For my Canadian friends, they had the day off for Thanksgiving. Both of these holidays are celebrated on the second Monday of October.

The company that I work for includes Columbus Day in the list of holidays where we get the day off, so I was one of the lucky people with the day off today.

Now that I am more aware of the Canadian heritage that I have, I have decided that from now on I will also celebrate this day as Thanksgiving. OK, my little bit of Canadian heritage is very small, but I do have Canadian ancestry.

However, since it is Columbus Day here in the US here is a picture for you.

This picture was taken back in 2005 during a trip to Argentina. Here we see Cristoforo Colombo looking out over the Rio de la Plata in Buenos Aires.

I thought about writing a bit about Columbus today, but my friends Trent and Rebekah wrote a great post about Celebrating Columbus Day that I will share instead. Take a look at their interesting post about Columbus. They recently visited his tomb in Sevilla, Spain.

I have known for a long time that Columbus Day is a controversial holiday. Here in California government workers do not get the day off with pay because of this controversy. I am also not a proponent of holidays that honor one individual, but would much rather see holidays that are more inclusive. To me, I have always seen Columbus Day as Explorer’s Day. We should take this day to honor all Explorers. We should include people like Lewis and Clark, Richard Byrd, Charles Lindberg, Alan Shepard, Neil Armstrong and many others who explored both our country and the space around us.

Happy Columbus Day and Happy Thanksgiving,

Steven