On 12 October 1492, when the little fleet of Christopher Columbus raised a Bahamian island that he named San Salvador, neither he nor anyone else guessed that this would be an historic date. Even Columbus, who regarded himself as a child of destiny, thought he had merely found an outlying island to “the Indies.” 

Had his entire fleet been wrecked, nobody would have been the wiser, and in all probability America would not have been discovered until 1500 when Pedro Alvares Cabral, on his way to the real India, sighted a mountain near the coast of Brazil. 

Thus the entire history of Europeans in America stems from Columbus’s First Voyage. The Northmen’s discovery of Newfoundland almost five centuries earlier proved to be dead-end. Pre-Columbian Portuguese, Welsh, Irish, English, and Venetian voyages to America are modern-made myths, phantoms which left not one footprint on the sands of time.

But Columbus’s First Voyage proved to be the avant-garde for thousands of hidalgos who, weary of sustaining their haughty pride in poverty, were ready to hurl themselves on the New World in search of gold and glory.

Columbus’s discovery led within a year to the first permanent European colony in America, in Hispaniola; and he himself made three more voyages of discovery, as well as sparking off those of Ojeda, Juan de La Cosa, the younger Pinzón, Vespucci, both Cabots, Magellan, and countless others. 

Not only the northern voyages, starting with John Cabot’s of 1497, but the southern voyages of discovery and Spain’s vast empire stretching from Florida to Patagonia and out to the Philippines stem from the First Voyage of that intrepid mariner and practical dreamer Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea….”

        Samuel Eliot Morrison (1887-1976), distinguished naval historian, Harvard

So the surname of Colon [Italian form of Columbus] which he revived was a fitting one, because in Greek it means “member”, and by his proper name Christopher, men might know that he was a member of Christ, by Whom he was sent for the salvation of those people …. [Christopher Columbus] carried [the Name of] Christ over deep waters with great danger to himself …. [Christopher Columbus asking Christ’s aid and protection in that perilous pass, crossed over with his company that the Indian nations might become dwellers in the triumphant Church of Heaven. There is reason to believe that many souls that Satan expected to catch because they had not passed through the waters of baptism were by the Admiral made dwellers in the eternal glory of Paradise….”

        Ferdinand Columbus (son of Christopher Columbus; 1488-1539)

In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Because, most Christian and very Exalted, Excellent, and mighty Princes, King and Queen of the Spains and of the Islands of the Sea, our Lord and Lady, in this present year, 1492, after Your Highnesses had made an end to the war with the Moors who ruled in Europe, and had concluded the war in the very great city of Granada, where in the present year, on the second day of the month of January, I saw the Royal Standards of Your Highnesses placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra ….

[He goes on to recap the insistent petitions of a prince of India for instructors from Rome to teach them the holy faith but such had not been provided] thus so many people were lost through lapsing into idolatries and receiving doctrines of perdition….

[And therefore] Your Highnesses … devoted to the Christian Faith … resolved to send me….

[Throughout, Christopher Columbus repeatedly emphasized the goal of converting people to Christ]

        Christopher Columbus, extracted from Journal of the First Voyage, 1492

Today, October 12, is what used to be universally and uncontroversially known as Columbus Day. 

In 1892 planning for the great Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, began in Chicago and culminated the following year. It was a phenomenal and confident celebration of Columbus’s discovery and the progress of American, Christian civilization. A mere century later, in 1992, the 500th anniversary was, to put it mildly, a major downer, with high school and college students instructing us that it would have been better had Columbus just stayed home. 

Presumably these young scholars would prefer to have been appetizers gracing the tables of the cannibalistic Aztecs, Incas, Caribes, and others.

The Russian, Zurab Tsereteli, dedicated a gargantuan bronze statue, The Birth of The New World to Columbus, Ohio, to celebrate; however, that city turned it down as did others. Puerto Rico distinguished herself by eventually accepting it. 

To our cynical age, men such as Columbus who took their faith with all seriousness; who genuinely feared God and sought to do their best to please Him are seen anachronistically as hypocrites and materialistic frauds. 

But nothing could be further from the truth. 

By remaining silent over much of the 20th Century and well into the 21st, we have allowed the Zinnistic charlatans and their ahistorical narratives to dominate our schools and universities which in turn have bequeathed us with countless generations of robotic, atheistic know-nothing, violently angry clones.

Although I would rather we as a country placed more emphasis on the church calendar — sans the countless saints days — it is notable that the three Christian themed holidays on the civic calendar — Christmas, Columbus Day, and Thanksgiving — have been under virulent attack for generations. Is it too much to ask for us to know how to defend the history behind these? 

Once again, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s warning is apropos: to destroy a country you must first cut off its roots.

May you enjoy your Columbus Day with gratitude to the Lord for having raised up such a man.

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)

Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1892-1893)

The Birth of The New World, Zurab Tsereteli, Arecibo, Puerto Rico