Although most Christians celebrate December 25 as the birthday
of Jesus Christ, few in the first two Christian centuries claimed
any knowledge of the exact day or year in which he was born.

The oldest existing record of a Christmas celebration is found in
a Roman almanac that tells of Christ’s Nativity festival led by the
church of Rome in 336 A.D.         
       

(between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506)

The first Columbus Day celebration took place on October
12, 1792, when the Columbian Order of New York, better
known as Tammany Hall, held an event to commemorate
the 300th anniversary of the historic landing.
 

In 1966, Mariano A. Lucca, from Buffalo, New York, founded
the National Columbus Day Committee, which lobbied to
make Columbus Day a federal holiday.      

These efforts were successful and legislation to create
Columbus Day as a federal holiday was signed by then
President Lyndon Johnson (below) on June 28, 1968,
to be effective beginning in 1971.