Abducted by Columbus

Today is Christopher Columbus day!!! And it is quickly becoming one of my favorite holidays of the year. Right behind St. Patrick’s day. You might be asking yourself why Christopher Columbus day would mean so much to me, I mean today Christopher Columbus is kind of a joke. More and more people consider him a laughing stock all because he got lost and thought he was near India when he ended up discovering North America. Then again, he didn’t technically discover America because the Indians were already here by the time he arrived.
So again, why is Christopher Columbus day such a big deal to me?






Because instead of celebrating this guy









I choose to celebrate this guy!



I can’t take credit for making this connection. I actually got the idea from watching The Big Bang Theory last year. But I do take full credit for taking a little idea mentioned on a tv show and expanding it into full reality.

And how, you may ask, did I do that?

By giving Columbus day the four things any true holiday has;

A theme song. (Christmas has all those carols, Thanksgiving Day has a son, Hanukah has that song about a dreidel, and I believe even Groundhog’s Day has a theme song)

A color. (Christmas and Valentines day use red, Halloween has orange and black)

A feast. (Thanksgiving has turkey, Easter has ham)

And a theme. A reason to celebrate. An activity for the family to all get behind.

Christopher Columbus’s first movie to direct was Adventures in Babysitting. (A true classic) therefore the official theme song for Christopher Columbus’s day will be “Babysitting Blues” a song prominently featured in the movie. It is also because of this song that the official holiday color will be blue.

Now, for the feast, we shall have chicken drumsticks and water. Sounds lame but when Billy gave those exact food items to Gizmo in Gremlins all hell broke loose. So those will be the official food items and of course the feast will have to take place just right after midnight.

Let us now get down to the main theme of the day. Every holiday has a theme. Sure we can spend the day watching Chris Columbus movies but we do the same at Christmas with Christmas movies, and yet the movies alone do not make the holiday.

This is my proposal…

I think that Chris Columbus would appreciate if we celebrated the day by finding out just how resilient and resourceful our children are. Call me crazy but I don’t see anything wrong with having a holiday set aside to find out how deep our children’s survival instincts run. And baised on the movies Columbus has released I would say today is the day to do just that.

So parents, hire an unprofessional babysitter to take your kids into the city for the night and see how much trouble they can get into.

Or don’t hire anyone and simply leave town for the weekend, or give your kid your credit card and ship him off to NYC.

Allow your kids to get lost in the mine shafts under and abandoned restaurant in search for lost treasure. Be sure to threaten them that if they don’t find the treasure their homes will be taken away from them.

Let us not forget Harry Potter, sure he has adult supervision but he has survival instincts any parent could be proud of.

According to my sister, Stephanie, a holiday is not truly a holiday unless the banks and post offices are closed. But alas, we can thank the original Chris Columbus for taking care of those things for us.

So now that Christopher Columbus Day has officially been made a holiday we can all get behind. Go out and enjoy what is left of the day!