Columbus Day

Columbus Day is a United States federal holiday marking the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas on October 12, 1492. For much of the twentieth century it was a straightforward celebration of that landing and of Italian American heritage. Today it is observed alongside — and in many places replaced by — Indigenous Peoples’ Day, making it one of the more contested dates on the American calendar.

From anniversary to federal holiday

The first recorded Columbus Day was held in New York City on October 12, 1792, when the Society of St. Tammany marked 300 years since the landing. A century later, President Benjamin Harrison called for a national observance of the 400th anniversary in 1892 — a gesture aimed partly at easing tensions with Italy after the 1891 lynching of eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans. After decades of campaigning by Italian American organizations and the Knights of Columbus, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made Columbus Day a permanent federal holiday in 1937, fixed to October 12. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act later moved it to the second Monday of October, effective in 1971, folding it into a long weekend.

A day observed two ways

In recent decades the holiday has been reconsidered. For many Native Americans and others, celebrating Columbus glosses over the violence and displacement that followed European colonization. Berkeley, California, became the first U.S. city to replace the holiday with Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 1992, and dozens of states, cities, and tribal nations have since followed, honoring Native history and culture on the same Monday. In 2021 President Biden issued the first presidential proclamation recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day, while Columbus Day remained the official federal holiday. Many communities now mark both, and observance varies widely from one place to the next.

How we get this date. The rule is the second Monday of October. The countdown finds the first Monday falling on or after October 1 and adds one week, so the date always lands between October 8 and 14 — never on a fixed day of the month. When the second Monday is October 12 itself, it coincides with the original anniversary.