Vanity: Does ANYBODY actually celebrate Kwanzaa?

[Junior_G]

Politically correct lefties like to mention Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa all in the same breath, implying that they are equally legitimate holiday celebrations enjoyed by different groups. Christmas and Hanukkah both have rich histories to back them up, and millions of people celebrate these holidays worldwide; but does anybody actually celebrate Kwanzaa? Liberals are absolutely in love with the concept of Kwanzaa as the Black Americans' alternative to Christmas; but do any Black Americans actually celebrate it?
Kwanzaa is a holiday that was invented by a left-wing activist college professor in 1966 as a holiday for Black Americans to celebrate African culture and practice the tenets of socialism. How many black families were actually willing to abandon their Christmas traditions in favor of this new holiday, made up willy-nilly by a radical campus nutjob? If anybody on this forum has ever actually met somebody that celebrates this holiday, I'd love to hear about it. I have a sneaking suspicion that next to nobody celebrates it.
If you'll recall, some number of years ago a Texaco executive was canned after being recorded making a disparaging comment about Kwanzaa. Today, to make a joke about Kwanzaa is considered no better than delivering a racial slur; but shouldn't bogus socialist holidays----as a general rule----be soundly ridiculed? I'm curious what people's thoughts are on this one...particularly black contributors to this forum. Liberals act like all black people celebrate Kwanzaa, but all the black people I know celebrate Christmas.

[oyez]

My black friends don't Kwanzaa. In fact most consider it pagan.

[cyborg]

Believe me you're not that far from the truth.

[JoeSchem]

I was in Target a couple years ago. They had Kwaanza celebration kits. I have never seen them anywhere else, and they occupied a very small portion of shelf space. I suspect that white liberal school teachers buy them (reimbursed by the school, of course!) to indoctorinate their classes in multiculturalism.

[cyborg]

Some people are not so void of self respect, self esteem and awareness that they need to involve themselves in something that's made up and prejudiced.

[Spiff]

Defending Kwanzaa because it has somehow morphed from its intent and its founder is just plain stupid. If it has lost its meaning, then why participate? The "African" trappings are crap as you are an American, not an African. And why "celebrate" a made-up "African" culture anyway? It is made up, fake, false, stoopid. There is no harvest festival in December in Africa. No one in Africa even knows what Kwanzaa is and would laugh at your silly faux-African crap.

And if you are Christian you certainly should have absolutely nothing to do with it as it is overtly anti-Christian.

[AnAmericanMother]

I pulled that straight off the Kwanzaa Information Center.

BTW, Karenga still runs the Official Kwanzaa Website I think if you read much there, especially the "Founders Message" section, you'll see that he's still at it.

[AnAmericanMother]

BTW, I roomed in college with a Kikuyu girl. She thought all this "pan-African" stuff was unbelievably silly, mostly because Africa is still so tribal (she thought of herself as Kikuyu, not "Kenyan") and the Kwanzaa stuff is such a misch-masch of traditions from all over. (Why a bunch of folks descended primarily from West Africans picked Swahili to learn instead of, say, Yoruba, is one of the great mysteries . . . )

[cyborg]

Kwanzaa is not about self-esteem. Kwanzaa is about rootedness in your culture, knowledge of our culture and encouragement to act and create in such a way that self-respect will come of itself.

When you focus just on self-esteem you focus on individual orientation and that is against African values. We must focus on standing worthy before our people and in the world. Because we live in an individualistic society, people put such emphasis on self-gratification and self-indulgence they do not see that there is a collective aspect to what we are about as a people.

*****COMMUNIST COMMUNIST THINKSPEAK COMMUNISM RIGHT FROM KARL MARX'S MOUTH*****

Excuse me, but the tribal, groupthink of african tribes is WHY Africa will never rise above a third world continent. If it has not worked there, what in HECK makes this guy think it will work here? It hasn't, and he's felon so I take him with a grain of salt.

[aruanan]

Vanity: Does ANYBODY actually celebrate Kwanzaa?

For all people may claim to the contrary, I bet at least 80% of those "celebrating" Kwanzaa are doing it with "anti-White Christmas" or a feeling of separation in mind--basically as a means of reaction. At least those are my impressions by living on Chicago's South Side and just a matter of blocks from Calypso Louie's house to the north and his shrine to the south (the giant green crescent visible from my window).

[hellinahandcart]

Believe me you're not that far from the truth.

I know. ;-)

[tcuoohjohn]

Absolutely...Kwanzaa is not an African festival. It is an African American festival. MUch like jazz is not african music but African-American music in origin.

In my family we have cornbeef and cabbage on New Year's day as a celebration of our Irish heritage. When I told that to a Irishman in Dublin he laughed his butt off. He said there were damn few jewish delis in famine Ireland.

Then it dawned on me...The corned beef and cabbage is merely an evocation of the American perception of the Irish experience. The same is true for Kwanzaa it is an evocation the African experience as seen through the eyes of African Americans. It may bear no resemblance to the current or historical experience of Africans but that never was the point. I suspect that Christmas celebrations would look pretty damn odd to an early Christian as well.

[AnAmericanMother]

I wish you'd tell Karenga that . . . he's still lost in his Garveyesque dreams of a mythical African Motherland. Some of the rhetoric on that site is pretty scary (and yes, he still worships Malcolm X too).

[Doc On The Bay]

In America, there IS NO "Kwanzaa!"

America celebrates Hanukka & Christmas at this time. There is NO OTHER Holiday at this time of the year which is traditionally celebrated in America.

"Adherents of" other "Traditions" MAY have "holidays" around this time of year, but they do NOT represent a sufficient proportion of America's Population to engender a National Celebration.

& So It Is!!

Doc

[tcuoohjohn]

You do raise an additional point that is interesting. I suspect that Africa's problems have been born out of that issue. Regionalism and Tribalism, not the colonial experience, is the wellspring of African difficulty. ( The Hutu- Tutsi split is the most graphic recent example) It is the engine of conflict they has retarded African development. I suspect that a Democratic Capitalist Pan-African Movement would be much more effective than the narrow tribal/regional model. A United States of Africa using an African version of federalism as a model.

As to the Yoruba versus Swahili issue.. Who knows.. I suspect that is may come from the availability of Swahili teachers from language schools as opposed to the paucity Yoruba instructors. I noticed that in India that Indian English sounds suspiciously like Irish English and that the teachers of street english in India were often Irishman either priests, brothers, nuns, or soldiers.

[AnAmericanMother]

Not likely to happen in OUR lifetimes . . . if folks from the different tribes in one part of Africa can't get along, they sure aren't going to be able to coexist peacefully with completely alien groups from the other side of the continent . . .

I can't express for you the contempt that this very well bred girl felt for the rootless, kinless scaff and raff from the Gold Coast . . .

[sakic]

Keep in mind that all holidays have a bit of made up to them. Almost all Christian holidays were made to coincide with pagan holidays as a recruiting tool way back when.

[GeronL]

Yes, but they weren't made up in 1966!

In reality Jesus was probably born during the summer, it was dry enough to travel to pay their taxes to the Romans... which is what Mary and Joseph were on their way to do, the Inn was full because of all the others going to pay their taxes too.

at least thats what I hear =o)

[Mo1]

America celebrates Hanukka & Christmas at this time. There is NO OTHER Holiday at this time of the year which is traditionally celebrated in America.

I didn't say that

The question was .. Does anyone celebrate Kwanzaa

I realize that it was made up in the 60's (or somewhere around that time) .. but there are some that do celebrate it .. why do they choose to do so ?? .. I don't know, I never asked them

[nopardons]

Yes, I did. LOL

[nopardons]

Oh, haven't seen you for a while. Hi !