Why is Columbus Day still a holiday?

[Spider Jerusalem]

35. He discovered the New World which is actually more than North America

and Hispaniola and the Caribbean islands are regarded as being a subregion of North America. The lands of the New World were suspected by Europeans but not conclusively discovered (apart from the Vikings' Vinland which was unknown outside Scandinavia). This was a pretty big thing which changed the course of world history; if Columbus hadn't done it, someone else, with Spanish or Portuguese backing, would have. The outcome would have not been materially different for the native inhabitants regardless; their lack of immunity to European diseases, notably smallpox, made their deaths in large numbers inevitable; the crusading nature of the Catholic religion of Spain made the auto-da-fe and forced conversion of the heathen just as inevitable (and Spain was the dominant European naval power of the period, so the early explorers would have been Spaniards or in Spanish pay even if not Columbus).