Every December 13 allows Saint Lucians my age to sit awhile, look back and ahead, with nostalgia and mixed feelings, about the way this date has forever affected our island’s history, in ways many still don’t comprehend.
Every year I refer here to it as ‘A Holiday for Nothing’ – and not for nothing, because it celebrates a Big Lie that’s lived with us from the day Christopher Columbus falsely claimed that he ‘Discovered’ Saint Lucia.
It’s impossible to ‘discover’ lands with people and civilizations, so every such claim by Columbus and the Europeans who came after accidentally sighting Haiti in 1492, when he thought he was in a part of India they subsequently misnamed the ‘West Indies’.
But, as even a simple Google search will prove today, Columbus lied, as in this result:
‘Christopher Columbus is traditionally credited with “discovering” St. Lucia for Europeans in 1502, naming it Santa Lucia after Saint Lucy of Syracuse because he sighted it on her feast day (December 13th). However, historical evidence suggests he may not have landed there, with some accounts pointing to earlier sightings by Spanish navigator Juan de la Cosa or even French pirates, though Columbus’s naming tradition stuck, even as the island was later colonized by the French and British.’
Septuagenarians here grew-up celebrating ‘Discovery Day’ on December 13 as a Public Holiday to celebrate Columbus with two main highlights in Castries: the ‘Greasy Pole’ battle on Columbus Square between men eagerly climbing over each other, up a greased pole, to fetch a Christmas Ham tied at its top; and the day of Aquatic Sports in Prince Alfred Basin, officiated by the burly Town Councillor, Louis Augier Mc Vane.
The Columbus lie was known long before Saint Lucia became independent in 1979, but even after that was proven, it continues to be celebrated, to this day, as a national holiday.
It was designated ‘National Day’ after the proposing government failed to convince the British to grant independence on December 13, 1978.
Independence came on February 22 — a date pulled out of a cork hat during the independence negotiations at Lancaster House in London – and thereafter started being celebrated as ‘Festival of Lights’.
The word ‘Light’ was also used by the pre-independence ruling party to associate which associates with its symbol of a ‘Torch’; and it appeared too in the Coat-of-Arms in its representation of ‘Land, People and Light’
But, like December 13, the date February 22 celebrates nothing commemorative in Saint Lucia’s documented history – and the two would eventually clash in another interesting way: in the island’s history of holidays.
The unpopular administration that negotiated independence had turned it into a partisan campaign issue ahead of the upcoming 1979 General Elections.
The neutral national symbolism of independence symbols was seriously violated in the way the ruling party’s registered colour (yellow) ended up in the centre of the new national flag; and the party’s registered electoral symbol (a Torch) ended-up similarly well-paced in the middle of the Coat-of-Arms.
Consequently, the more-popular opposition opposed independence on a purely partisan basis – and won the elections on July 2, 1979 (just five months later) with a 12-5 margin.
Saint Lucia has for over-four decades enjoyed the invidious position of having both a ‘National Day’ and an ‘Independence Day’ on different dates and the laughable anomaly of December 13 being a holiday, but not February 22.
To make Independence Day a holiday, a government had to stop official observance of The Queen’s Birthday as a holiday – and now giving the island two holidays of historical insignificance.
Saint Lucia and Saint Lucians have lived with the Columbus Lie and violation of the nation’s symbols like forever, seemingly resigned to accepting them as mere facts of life.
But there can only be one National Day or one Independence Day, especially as they’re the same.
Earlier chroniclers of our rich and varied political culture have proffered that Saint Lucians so-love holidays that any ruling party that removes the holiday from December 13 will simply lose the next general elections it faces.
But I always saw it as just another sorry excuse for not doing what must be done.
I also always insist Saint Lucians should learn to pay more respect to the fact that ours is the only country with a special colour (Cerulean Blue) created for its national flag, as we also seem to feel any blue will do.
So, where from here?
A nation simply cannot forever entertain party symbols adorning its national emblems and or continue celebrating the longest lie in its history just because it seems okay.
In his first term Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre quietly made the necessary transition from the Privy Council to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as the island’s final appellate court.
He also indicated during Prince William’s visit that the island’s next major constitutional move will be to become a republic.
In his second term, it would therefore be good for the PM to continue on the road to republicanism, but certainly not in the cloak-and-dagger conspiratorial way of previous government.
Instead, it has to be through a series of national awareness campaigns that start (for example) from Colonialism, Slavery and Emancipation to Associated Statehood, Independence and Republicanism.
December 13 can be designated as a National Awareness Day, dedicated each year to an appropriate sub-theme that will challenge young historians to unveil those hidden parts of Saint Lucia’s past that will better inform our present and future.
Making December 13 a National Awareness Day – holiday or not — would definitely give real meaning to a day Saint Lucia has lived as a lie from the day the liar claimed to have discovered what he simply saw.
Proverbially, Columbus’ Lie was a mortal historic sin crying to the heavens for vengeance, but really, it’s another sorry history chapter written by the hunter and begging to be re-written by the descendants of the hunted.