When people think of Columbus Day, the general consensus among most teenagers is that it’s a day that seems to blissfully free students from school. The actual holiday doesn’t have a lot of tradition: Americans don’t have parties to celebrate it, and there aren’t certain customs that define the day. It’s just meant to revive the memory of the era of the prolific explorer who brought Europeans to the Americas.

Columbus Day, despite appearing to younger children as a harmless chance to get to miss school, has always been quite controversial. Anti-Catholic activists immediately opposed Columbus Day when it became an official holiday in the United States in 1937, whereas the more recent opposition in history has shifted attention toward Christopher Columbus’ treatment of indigenous people. Students don’t learn about the atrocities he committed against indigenous people until high school, which has changed some teenager’s views on the historical figure vastly.