Columbus Day is a holiday celebrated in many countries in the Americas, commemorating the date of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World on October 12, 1492.

Similar holidays, celebrated as Día de la Raza (Day of the People) in many countries in Latin America, Día de las Culturas (Day of the Cultures) in Costa Rica, Discovery Day in the Bahamas, Día de la Hispanidad in Spain, and the newly-renamed (as of 2002) Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance) in Venezuela, commemorate the same event.

United States observance Italian-Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage. Columbus Day was introduced as a U.S. national holiday by a lawyer, a son of Genoese immigrants coming around-the-horn. During the 1850s, Genoese immigrants settled and built ranches along the Sierra Foothills. As the gold ran out, these skilled "Cal-Italians", from the Alpenino hills, were able to prosper as self-sufficient farmers in the Mediterranean climate of Northern California. San Francisco has the oldest Columbus Day celebration, with Italians having commemorated it there since 1869. This lawyer then moved to Colorado, which had a population of Genoese miners, and where, in 1907, the first state-wide celebration was held. In 1937, at the behest of the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic fraternal service organization named for the voyager), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt set aside Columbus Day as a United States holiday. Since 1971, the holiday has been commemorated in the U.S. on the second Monday in October, the same day as Thanksgiving in neighboring Canada. However, it is generally only observed today by banks, the Post Office, and most governments and schools but not businesses or stock exchanges. Día de la Raza The date of Columbus' arrival in the Americas is celebrated in Latin America (and in some Latino communities in the USA) as the Día de la Raza ("day of the people"), commemorating the first encounters of Europe and Native Americans. The day was first celebrated in Argentina in 1917, Venezuela in 1921, Chile in 1923, and Mexico in 1928. The day was also celebrated under this title in Spain until 1958, when it was changed to the "Día de la Hispanidad." In 2002, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela changed the name to Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance).