I'm an Italian American; I won't celebrate Columbus Day

As an Italian-American, the relationship I have with Columbus Day is a strange one, but ultimately a place of pain for me.

I am of a generation of Italian Americans that is far removed from the racial tension associated with an Italian identity (which at a place and time there was definitely that reality for Italians). My father and his relatives experienced being Italian in a far different way than I did. Although my father spent time surrounded by many, many other cultures and people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, from his descriptions it was far from the unified racial utopia that we all long for. Simply having interaction with another group of people for him didn't erase the felt presence of racial tension that had stood between the different communities of San Francisco. With that in the air, I think there came a bolstering or closing of ranks when it came to standing behind that Italian identity. Sometimes I've seen it lead to stubbornness and rock-headedness that made dying on every Italian-hill somewhat constant.

I love my Italian heritage. I love the culture of my family. I love the values and the positives that come with it. As much as I feel I can now piece out and identify the parts of that culture that are hurtful, damaging, or just misguided I hold it all with a peaceful sense of non-mutual exclusivity. Yet at the same time, I still hold that as my identity: on my dad's side of the family, I am an Italian American who experienced an upbringing consistently exposed to Italian American Culture.

However, having that identity shouldn't make me blindly follow it down a dark hole of history. Italy has its fair share of villains in history and I would be misguided, for instance, to stand behind or prop up someone like Mussolini simply because of their racial origin. So it baffles me that Italian Americans, and even specifically Americans not of Italian heritage, would be willing to die on the Columbus hill. There is a heat generated around protecting a day we call Columbus Day to remember Columbus for 'finding America'.

There is so much I find wrong with that assumption and why it compels us to celebrate a day in honor of him, but I digress. I understand the history of why Columbus day started, and I understand the groups and communities that propelled that day forward, but I don't find it a compelling reason. But now in retrospect, given what we know about Columbus as a person, his activities, his legacy, and the erroneous idea that he 'found' North America, why would we want to stake our Italian American identity or our American identity on that concept or paradigm?

As someone who actually has as a stake in this identity, I want to share a thought with you: I don't want to celebrate or will celebrate Columbus day.

To celebrate Christopher Columbus feels like setting the bar really, really low for who should represent Italians and Italian Americans, let alone the values our country holds. I'd personally get the same feelings celebrating a confederate general that I would Christopher Columbus. History has not stood on their side. And what's more, their very role as an explorer (or in the aforementioned example, a general) was spent expending energy for an endeavor that was ultimately evil, wrong, and against the inherent sacredness and God-given imago Dei that I personally believe every human being holds (including Columbus or a confederate general).

We can do much better to celebrate someone else. There has to be, in all the Italians since Italy stood, a better paragon or example of virtue we want to look forward to. No one person is perfect. Ever. But to throw our identity underneath someone who was a slaver and colonizer is suggesting we are not worthy of something more virtuous or noble.

So yes, I will celebrate Indigenous people's day. Gladly. I won't celebrate Christopher Columbus.

If we can find a day in the year to celebrate an Italian more worthy of attention then I'm there. I'll be there in Green, White, and Red. I'll raise a glad of red wine with you and share my family’s Crab Cioppino recipe to the table. I'll toast the beauty, life, and vibrancy of Italian culture.

I won't toast to slavery, colonizing, and racism, however. That's a banquet table I refuse to choose into.

It's not hard to imagine that these words are coming to the choir for some of you, however, there are still some of us who haven't quite made up our minds about this, or are simply ambivalent as to what day holds who’s name. But I challenge you to think about how we remember history and what face we give it.

What we put in our calendar books expresses what we care about

Giving Up Atheism For Lent

This was originally a ‘thought’ that I wanted to share this last Lent 2020, but never got around to it, nor had a home for it. It lives here now, for your late reading pleasure.

One critique of the modern Church in American which I’ve discussed with many people is the lack of our actions as Christians in the world. Most folks outside the Church can’t really tell us what it is we do, but they can speak to what we think or specifically, are against. We are known by our brand, and our brand these days is very different than what it should be.

And it’s a fair criticism to level at the American Church. Much of what we are concerned with is a call to believe or think the right things at a lack for a substantial action based catechesis. We hardly balk at other christians who aren’t using their weekends to serve the poor and needy, or put their faith into action in their personal lives, but if you question the reality of God in a Facebook post then your brothers and sisters will say they are praying for you in the hopes of recovery.

Now Orthodoxy is certainly important; without it we would have some wrong ideas about God or about the nature of our faith. Most of the big culture issues we think we are just coming to as Americans, the early church spent hundreds of years debating at length with some of the best minds of their time. In fact, without Orthodoxy we’d probably become just as action-less in our faith lives (see the Universalist ‘God’s got it all covered’ theology). 

But the reality is that we are very, very light on the action-based faith lifestyle in the states. I say this as a victim of it myself. The choice to act or to simply think is a quick and easy one for a society that emphasizes intellect and correct thought around a number of issues. Especially when it comes to the hard stuff like serving the widows and orphans, welcoming the stranger or refugee, or standing alongside those in society who are pushed to the fringe and pressed into misery and slavery by the powers of this world. I can tell you how I feel about it but I can’t remember the last time I actually did anything about it.

So it’s confusing to me that Christians would want to go a step further into the realm of even less interaction with God during the Lent seasons when it comes to action; the one season where we should be doing the most reflection and prayer leading up to the Resurrection.  What I’m referring to is a practice which I’ve seen more and more people, even Christians, engaging in called “Giving Up God For Lent”.

On it’s face (and name) the ideas is so disappointing and saddening to me that I don’t even know where to begin. That our modern church has gotten the Lenten Fast so backward that it would equate ‘Lent’ with ‘reduction’ saddens me deeply. The contextual realties of ‘Atheism for Lent’ feels as strangely tone deaf as suggesting that Muslims try pork for Ramadan or Buddhists give physical attachment a try. As Christians our identity is rooted in Christ. To suggest we give up Christ for a season suggests we give up our identity as followers of his words for the sake of an experimental jog around a different theological block. It feels shallow and vapid.

For all the food and actions we fast from in our Lenten season, the idea is not to create void in us by deleting a chocolate bar or a meal but to invite God into those vacuums and spaces. It’s asking our Father to be the all-in-all that we truly need. To suggest that we can grow in faith and benefit in our walk with Christ by consciously choosing to let go of Him feels like a smug way of dabbling with apostasy. It’s some kind of Freudian slip from the participant that implies there is a personal belief that there is not so much sufficiency in the sufficiency of Christ.

When I think of the countless Christians around the world who are being killed for their faith, persecuted because of their love for Christ, and exiled from their homes because they choose to cling to the Hope of the Resurrection, it’s actually a bit gross to think that we Christians in the west would use our western freedom and privilege to disavow the greatest truth and belief we hold, even for a month or two, as some kind of entertaining or experimental exercise. We are sort of already doing this anyway day to day. Many of us are living in a ‘No God For Lent’ life, in which we are actively giving up God and also ignoring our call to live out our faith in the choices and decisions we make. 

I’d be ashamed to tell my Egyptian Christian friend I was ‘giving up God for Lent’ after he has shared his story of torture and near death, countless times, at the hands of people who hate Christ. The same person who gave up his life in his home country to be able to continue following Jesus. That last thing he wanted to do in jail was ‘Give up God for Lent’. 

What we have forgotten in the American Church is that our Lenten practice is a mystical, holy, and ancient tradition that allows us to stand in a rich river of christian spiritual rhythm. For every meal we skip we are feeling with our very body and soul the great gift we have in creation for our stomachs: Food and drink. For every bad habit we choose to lay down at the Altar, we are seeing how devotion to Christ can transform us into new creations. When we devote time to pray constantly in response to these hunger pangs or temptations, we are consciously choosing to say ‘change me Lord’. You’d be surprised what hungers you lose and what hungers you develop in Lent. 

And maybe that’s actually the fear underneath it all. The fear of change is great. Our sense of individual agency and control is even greater. When asked to take a season to change and let go of our control, is our answer really going to be “No God for Lent”?. We are spiritual control freaks at it’s worst.

As Christians, at the end of the day, every day, regardless of what season, we have to ask ourselves: Did we wake up and consciously choose to follow Christ today? Did we listen to the call of The Spirit when we saw a beggar outside our Safeway? Did we listen to the cries of our neighbor through the walls after a domestic dispute? Did we alter the many small but illusory comforts of our modern life in order to live our lives in alignment with Justice, both economic and judicial? When we are called do we say ‘Yes Lord’ or do we say ‘Just 10 more minutes of gossip with my friends!”?.

We love the verses where Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, and to be a ‘good person’, but we conveniently forgot the harder passages. The passages about camels and needles. The passages about luke-warm water. The passages about suffering and being hated by the world.  Lent, I’m afraid, is all about those passages. Biblical cherry-picking christians are problematic no matter how you describe your theology, politics, or way of life.

The last thing we should be asking ourselves during Lent is ‘where can I have less God?”, and instead be asking ‘Where can God fill where the noise used to be?”. Try asking that one question and follow the thread. I can guarantee it will lead to the harder, but healthier questions we each need in our lives.