Whatever you were doing on Monday, it probably didn’t matter much to you that the day had been proclaimed Columbus Day. Or, Indigenous People’s Day. Or, Oct. 8, 2018.

Whatever you call it, a survey back along showed the second Monday of October, proclaimed Columbus Day to honor an Italian sailing for the crown and lucre of Spain, is the least observed of our holidays, with only 14 percent of offices and businesses closing.

On Oct 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus turned up at the right time in the right place when he set foot on an island in the Caribbean. Many object to honoring him, because he was a brutal racist lacking empathy for the people who lived on the islands he visited.

Columbus wrote of the folks on that island: “They do not bear arms. . . I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They would make fine servants. With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” He went on to do just that, enslaving, mutilating and murdering many.

Still, Italian-American and Catholic organizations pushed for Oct. 12 to be designated as Columbus Day. Organizations such as the political party known as the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan opposed the idea, not, of course, on the grounds that Columbus was a racist, enslaver and murderer but that he was Catholic and that recognizing the day honored immigrants and the Catholic church.

The Italian-Americans and Catholics won that fight, and from 1937 until 1971, we officially observed Oct. 12 as Columbus Day. In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which moved Columbus Day to the second Monday in October.

Today, only 23 states give state employees a Columbus Day holiday. Maine, always happy to kowtow to state-employee unions, is one of the 23. Three of those 23 observe Columbus Day, but not in October. In Indiana and George, it is on Christmas Eve, guaranteeing at least a two-day Christmas holiday and in New Mexico on the day after Thanksgiving, setting up a four-day weekend. Three states (Vermont, South Dakota and Alaska) call it Indigenous People’s Day. California calls it both. Some municipalities, mostly college towns (Norman, Oklahoma, e.g.) call it Indigenous People’s Day, too.

Those renaming it Indigenous People’s Day are responding to a small but fierce drive to stop honoring Columbus, precisely because he was a racist, enslaver and murderer.

Here’s an idea to work through the annual fights over honoring or damning Columbus. Do neither. Keep the observance but use it to honor the coming to this land of people black, brown and white who would, over time, develop it. Set our best attributes out front for the world to see. Call it, instead, Founders Day.

Those who greeted Columbus when he sailed the ocean blue were descended from folks who had come centuries earlier from away. But those who began coming in the 17th Century started something new in the New World. A constitutional republic. Honor that.

While we’re at it, we could also clean up around a couple of other observances. Instead of tying observances to prominent people, who always had a ton of help in attaining their accomplishments, we could honor the ideas for which they had worked.

Change Martin Luther King Jr. Day to Civil Rights Day, but keep its observance in January, the month of Dr. King’s birth. And, change Washington’s Birthday to Presidents Day, a shift that is slowly taking place already, and keep it in February since two of our greatest presidents (and some lesser lights) were born in that month.

After all, our civil rights are chief among the achievements that set us apart and often above other countries. Even Canada, our pacific neighbor, limits speech in ways that many Americans would find distasteful, and it enshrined the limits in the constitution it adopted in 1982. Canadians, by the way, also observe the second Monday in October as a national holiday. But they call it Thanksgiving and they eat turkey then. Even England, whence many of our civil rights ideas derive, has an established state religion.

Presidents have had huge impacts on our history, of course. A few from earlier eras had keen foresight and the wisdom to prepare us for the long run. We could honor presidents as a group with Presidents Day. That was the intention when the Universal Monday Holiday Act was introduced, but Virginia’s congressional delegation wanted to keep George Washington’s name in play, so the tag of Presidents Day was snipped off.

By setting the February holiday on the third Monday, Congress ensured it would never be observed on Feb. 22 or on Feb. 12, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. The only possible dates for a third Monday are the 15th through the 21st. Part of the reason to create the Monday holiday in February was to get away from having two holidays in February, an idea only the owner of a ski-mountain could love.

President John F. Kennedy liked to remind us that ours is a “government of laws, not of men.” The idea was first put forward by John Adams, perhaps our most underrated president. So, if we redirected these observances to the ideas for which great people worked, we would be emphasizing the ideas, not the people who put them into effect.

Eleanor Roosevelt is reputed to have said, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” Naming holidays for some of our greatest ideas would underscore that we are a nation of great ideas, ideas that have sparked people to do great things.

Bob Neal studied political ideas and politics at UMKC and Vanderbilt. In retirement from farming, he still follows political ideas (and politicians) closely.