A small Connecticut town just took a big step to observe and honor Christopher Columbus.

After a decade of holding class on the second Monday in October, Columbus Day will once again be celebrated during the 2024-25 school year in New Canaan.

The New Canaan Board of Education passed a motion 5-4 on Monday to reestablish the holiday.

The board voted largely along party lines, with most Republican members voting in favor of reviving the holiday and Democrats voting against, according to the New Canaan Advertiser.

“At my core, I feel like it comes down to a ‘cancel culture,’” board member Julie Toal said at a Dec. 19, 2022, board meeting.  “There are statues being torn down of Columbus all over and I think it’s a shame. It’s our history and I think, good or bad, we need to learn from our history.”

Also missing from the conversation is the history that underpins the parades and statues. In 1891, 11 innocent Italian immigrants were lynched in the streets of New Orleans, which shocked the nation and sparked a diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and Italy.

To ease the tension, President Benjamin Harrison, in 1892, led the first national Columbus Day celebration. Italian Americans and immigrants, facing intense economic and cultural suppression, then used Columbus as a symbol to fuel their assimilation, and to fight widespread discrimination.

Public and legal opinion continue to shift in favor of the 15th-century explorer. In October, the White House — in collaboration with ISDA National President Basil Russo — issued a glowing Columbus Day proclamation, and this past December, Philadelphia’s Columbus statue was saved, thanks to the legal efforts of George Bochetto, Esq., who serves as national counsel to the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations (also led by Russo).

Earlier this year, New York Supreme Court Justice Gerard Neri blocked the mayor of Syracuse from removing the city’s decades-old Columbus statue.

Meanwhile, lawsuits are underway in Chicago, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to save more holidays and statues.