[tcuoohjohn]

Sure they do...we call it Thanksgiving. Kwanzaa is just a late comer to the harvest festival tradition with a bit of African twang to it.

If you go to Britain they don't have Thanksgiving but something very much like it.In Britain churches celebrate harvest festivals when the wheat has been cut and the apples have been picked. The churches are decorated in flowers and greenery. Fruit and vegetables are also put on display, with a loaf of bread in the middle. Sometimes a plough might be bought into the church for blessing so as the next years harvesting will be plentiful.

In Britain a corn dolly is created by plaiting the wheat stalks to create a straw figure. The corn dolly is kept until the Spring. This was done as people believed that the corn spirit lived in the wheat and as the wheat was harvested, the spirit fled to the wheat which remained. By creating the dolly the spirit is kept alive for the next year and for the new crop. Sometimes these dollies are hung up in the barn or sometimes in the farmhouse or even in the church. In Spring the dolly would be ploughed back into the soil. There are many types of corn dolly. Kwanzaa merely echoes the harvest festival.

It underscores the pagan roots to all our religious rituals.

[AnAmericanMother]

But what is harvested in late December? That's no "first fruits" - in Britain that comes right after the reaping, usually in October (but earlier the farther north you go).

Aside from any supposed "pagan" associations, we have direct evidence that ol' Ronnie Karenga made this up out of whole cloth. Doubtless he used any pagan stuff that he heard about or read of, just like that fraud Gardner made up Wicca . . . but at least Gardner was just trying to get a date, not foment Marxist nonsense ...