Leif Erikson Day

This weekend is Columbus Day weekend. The final three-day weekend of the year. Columbus Day celebrates Christopher Columbus discovering America, right? Remember? In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had three ships and left from Spain; He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain. We learned this poem in school growing up.

People of Italian heritage have always revered Columbus because he was born in Genoa, and they are rightly proud of his achievements. Contemporary opinion about Columbus has not been positive. Some believe his actions toward the native people were both brutal and cruel. Other historians have argued that some of the accounts of the brutality were exaggerated and a part of an historical tendency towards anti-Spanish sentiment. Whether this is true or not, I’m not going to solve today. What I find interesting is what we do know is true.

Columbus never reached “America.” He landed in Hispaniola – the island in the Caribbean that today includes Honduras and Haiti. We also know that North America was “discovered” (an interesting phrase the native inhabitants would likely object to) 500 years earlier by a Norse explorer from Iceland named Leif Erikson. Nonetheless, Columbus still gets a long weekend.

I’m not complaining. I enjoy a three-day weekend as much as the next guy. I just find it fascinating how often people stick to what they choose to believe even in the face of incontrovertible proof otherwise. 

Similarly, as believers, we know the angels said to the women who went to the Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb on Sunday morning, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead” (Luke 24:5-6)! Still, there are many who continue to reject Christianity because they choose not believe that Jesus actually died on the cross and then rose from the dead. Did you know there are actually multiple non-Christian sources from the first century that testify to Jesus’ death on the cross, and that His tomb was later found empty? It is a list too long to go over now but suffice it to say that a man named Jesus was crucified to death by the Roman Empire in Jerusalem in AD 33. That is simply an historical fact. As was His empty tomb. 

Never underestimate the human ability to rationalize, justify, or deny. There are still folks who do not believe we landed on the moon. People did not believe Jesus was the Messiah then and many still do not. That decision remains a personal choice, but I just wonder, how does one deny facts? I suppose the same way some still choose to believe Columbus discovered a land we now know he never set foot on. I choose to recognize Leif Erikson’s accomplishment, because it’s true. Oh, and Jesus. Yeah, His story is true too. Enjoy your long weekend.    

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