Boxing and Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa starts today.




Happy Boxing Day and Happy start of Kwanzaa.

Boxing Day

is a British holiday on the day after Christmas, whose meaning and origin are varied, with one explanation being:

It was the day when people would give a present or Christmas 'box' to those who have worked for them throughout the year. This is still done in Britain for postmen and paper-boys - though now the 'box' is usually given before Christmas, not after.

See the article for further explanations.

Kwanzaa

celebrated December 26 to January 1, is explained in this video below if you are interested in a complete but concise explanation. The irreverent video at the top frame of this post, besides being entertaining, showing up all over the web, illustrates a point, which I'll get to at the conclusion of this post.

Kwanzaa:

is a non-religious African American holiday which celebrates family, community, and culture.




The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase 'matunda ya kwanza' which means 'first fruits' in Swahili. The kinara is the center of the Kwanzaa setting and represents the original stalk from which we came: our ancestry.

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Kwanzaa

(or Kwaanza) is a week-long Pan-African secular holiday primarily honoring African-American heritage. It is observed almost exclusively in the United States of America.

Kwanzaa consists of seven days of celebration, featuring activities such as candle-lighting and pouring of libations, and culminating in a feast and gift-giving. It was founded by Ron Karenga, and first celebrated from December 26, 1966, to January 1, 1967. Karenga calls Kwanzaa the African American branch of "first fruits" celebrations of classical African cultures.

The Seven Principles

or Nguzo Saba are a set of ideals created by Dr. Maulana Karenga. Each day of Kwanzaa emphasizes a different principle:

Umoja (Unity) To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems and to solve them together.

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

These principles correspond to Karenga's notion that "the seven-fold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black.

Underlying these principles are Black pride, a return to roots, and unity.

The History of Kwanzaa

Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor and chairman of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach, created Kwanzaa in 1966. After the Watts riots in Los Angeles, Dr. Karenga searched for ways to bring African-Americans together as a community. He founded US, a cultural organization, and started to research African 'first fruit' (harvest) celebrations. Karenga combined aspects of several different harvest celebrations, such as those of the Ashanti and those of the Zulu, to form the basis of Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa Celebrations

Common to the celebrations are song, dance, and African drums.

Each family celebrates Kwanzaa in its own way, but celebrations often include songs and dances, African drums, storytelling, poetry reading, and a large traditional meal. On each of the seven nights, the family gathers and a child lights one of the candles on the Kinara (candleholder), then one of the seven principles is discussed. The principles, called the Nguzo Saba (seven principles in Swahili) are values of African culture which contribute to building and reinforcing community among African-Americans. Kwanzaa also has seven basic symbols which represent values and concepts reflective of African culture. An African feast, called a Karamu, is held on December 31.

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Points

Blessings

First, God bless all of our African American brothers and sisters who are celebrating this holiday today. May you gain great joy from your family and friends with your festivities and rededicate your life to your purpose.

Implications

I see good and bad in the holiday.

The Good

I love ritual and believe that with the passing of time we have lost some of the meaning of rituals in our existence. With the rise of secularism in America, some of us have lost the great soothing of our Catholic or other rituals that used to fill our lives with meaning. Kwanzaa admirably fulfills this purpose.

The emphasis on family and unity in Kwanza cannot but be a positive thing.

The desire to leave communities more beautiful and beneficial is wonderful.

Plus, the general feeling of Kwanzaa appears to be joyful and celebratory. We humans need more of this, and Kwanzaa, like Christmas, is a fine exercise in good cheer, dance, song, and laughter.

The Bad

Kwanzaa is one of those movements that was born of black pride and separatism; and an expression of the storied multi-culturism, which is the politically correct liberal rage even today.

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Much of the emphasis on separateness, I believe, comes from a misunderstanding of e pluribus unam, on which our country was founded, whose meaning is out of the many, one. The multiculturalists have distorted the meaning to become out of one, many. In other words, our country was founded on the principle of unity among all our citizens, out of the many kinds of people we attract here. Our country was not founded on creating a separateness within our unity—rather, on creating a unity despite our differences.

The emphasis ought to be on being Americans. Fine, I know, Irish Americans and Polish Americans and German Americans take a great deal of pride, some of them, in their heritage and celebrations. This adds to the richness of life, as does Kwanzaa. On the other hand. the Irish, Polish, German et al Americans never strive to separate themselves from the rest of America. They don't dedicate their lives to just the welfare of their fellow Irish, Poles, or Germans.

In my social work days, I entered the homes of several Afro-centric homes, some of them that celebrate Kwanzaa. Though these were wonderful people, with great family structure, respect and dignity, hard-working, good Americans—I was struck by their insularity. All the pictures in the homes were of blacks—not just those of family members, but every piece of art and so on. It looked like the mirror-image of some white homes that seem to ban anything smacking of color from its walls.

Plus, despite the humanity and decency and religiosity emanating from these homes and people, I also got the feeling of an us versus them atmosphere. I even heard what to me were racist remarks at times. "Blacks have to be better than whites to succeed." "All black children will face misery in their lives." And so on. The assumption being that all whites are racist.

One other major criticism I have of Kwanzaa is that it is inner-directed to a fault. Every effort in a black's life is directed, by this philosophy, towards helping blacks—not towards helping whites and other races; not by helping their communities, just black communities; and not by helping America. In fact, it is directed at creating an enclave within America, without any connection or responsibility to society as a whole.

There are other criticisms of Kwanzaa which I won't go into, like its seeming promotion of communism, and so on.

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Conclusions

I remain of mixed feelings about Kwanzaa. I see much good in it, concerning family, ritual, joy, and heritage. I regret, though, that Kwanzaa seems to separate a group of people from the mainstream, rather than merely promote its individuality.

The irreverent video at the head of today's post shows how far the search for separateness can go. Some people, white and black, want to distinguish themselves by vulgarity, profanity, and crudeness. Some people make a good living at it. Others entertain us with it. The majority, though, of those who adopt it get stuck in lives of anger, without the possibility of joining in society, without the chance to rise economically, and with a mentality of us versus them that guarantees unhappiness.

God bless all of you who celebrate Kwanzaa, and may you have joyous days this holiday season for you.

Rock

(*Wikipedia is always my source unless indicated.)


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