Kwan­zaa (For Dum­mies)

When you think of this time of year, you en­vi­sion chest­nuts roast­ing on an open fire and in­ti­mate mo­ments with friends and fam­i­lies. These keep us as warm in­side as out dur­ing the cold win­ter months. With this comes a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent cel­e­bra­tions that take place dur­ing De­cem­ber. From Christ­mas and Hanukkah to a lesser-known hol­i­day…Kwan­zaa.

What?

Kwan­zaa is a week­long cel­e­bra­tion that hon­ors Black/​African Amer­i­can cul­ture and tra­di­tional val­ues. These cel­e­bra­tions of­ten in­clude songs and dances, African drums, sto­ry­telling, po­etry read­ing, and a large tra­di­tional meal. It is ob­served from De­cem­ber 26th to Jan­u­ary 1st and con­sists of gift-giv­ing and a big feast. This hol­i­day is pretty new in com­par­i­son to other hol­i­days cel­e­brated in the U.S.

Why?

There are sev­eral prin­ci­ples of Kwan­zaa, in the or­der of Umoja (unity), Ku­jich­ag­u­lia (self-de­ter­mi­na­tion), Ujima (col­lec­tive work and re­spon­si­bil­ity), Uja­maa (co­op­er­a­tive eco­nom­ics), Nia (pur­pose), Ku­umba (cre­ativ­ity), and Imani (faith). These prin­ci­ples in tan­dem with their re­spec­tive sym­bols are pre­sented in the form of seven can­dles. Three of which are red, rep­re­sent­ing the strug­gle of Black peo­ple within the U.S, and three of which are green, which sym­bol­izes hope for the fu­ture. The last can­dle is black, which rep­re­sents peo­ple of African de­scent. 

Who?

Kwan­zaa is ac­tu­ally less than 50 years old. Maulana Karenga, a black na­tion­al­ist who later be­came a col­lege pro­fes­sor, cre­ated Kwan­zaa as a way of unit­ing and em­pow­er­ing the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­nity af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing Watts ri­ots. He took the name  “Kwan­zaa” from the Swahili phrase, “matunda ya kwanza,” which means “first fruits.”

Though of­ten thought of as an al­ter­na­tive to Christ­mas, many peo­ple ac­tu­ally cel­e­brate both. Now that you’ve re­ceived a small crash course on the mean­ing of Kwan­zaa maybe you’ll give it a try! Or at least be more knowl­edge­able on the topic and its strong con­nec­tion with the Black com­mu­nity.