What exactly is Kwanzaa? Who Celebrates it? And Why?

Answer 1

Kwanzaa was started by Ron Karenga and it is 7 days long starting on the 26th of December to celebrate the first fruits. First Fruits celebrations have been celebrated in Africa for many centuries. It teaches 7 principals that are especially lacking in todays society. I am offended that people who answered this question, and I would bet are not African American have the audacity to say its not a holiday. Using their calendar logic, I could say that yes it is a real holiday since Hallmark does sell cards celebrating Kwanzaa. I got off topic. We light a candle each night and as a family discuss the principal of the day, what it means to us, how we use it, and how we can better apply it. In a season of commercialism, Kwanzaa is a great time for us to really be together and focus on what this time of year is really about. The 7 pricipals are:
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 brother's and sister's 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.

Answer 2

Kwanzaa (or Kwaanza) is a week-long secular holiday honoring African-American heritage, observed from December 26 to January 1 each year, almost exclusively by African-Americans 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 controversial black nationalist 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.

Answer 3

Kwanzaa (or Kwaanza) is a week-long secular holiday honoring African-American heritage, observed from December 26 to January 1 each year, almost exclusively by African-Americans 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 controversial black nationalist 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.

Answer 4

Kwanzaa is not a made up holiday. It is a holiday for African Americans to celebrate themselves and to come up in the community. It is a time to build and shop at our own stores and teach our children and to learn more about ourselves. It is not a time for girlfriends to be pulling their boyfriends through a crowded mall so that they can tell them what they want this ONE time a year to show them that they really care about them. It is not a time of evil; of people fighting over the last tickle me Elmo; It is 7 days of 7 principles; Tell me, who's clothes are you buying? Not your own...who are you supporting? You worked hard all year to give praise to someone else so that your children will be happen? They should be happy all throughout the entire year; your wife or husband should be happy all throughout the year. Anyway, I guess I got off onto another subject, but folks should study things before they go and make assumptions on it. It is our holiday and it's something very important to some of us and the goal is that we all are well informed.

Answer 5

"Unlike Hanukkah, which is a real religious holiday period it does have a beginning and end. That leads me to the question, What religious holiday is Kwanzaa? It's not one. It something made up."

I've got news for you, Hanukkah (and all other religious holidays) was also made up, it was just made up a lot longer ago.

Christmas, in fact, was intentionally placed at December 25 to coincide with (and preempt) the Roman Holiday of Saturnalia. Talk about being made up!

I'm White, but I'm amazed at how quick people are to invalidate Kwanzaa just because it's a Black holiday.

Answer 6

To me, and I am around a lot of African Americans, it is a made up holiday. Nobody celebrated it until a few year's ago. I wondered if it was a way that black people started a count down to Martin Luther King's birthday (mid January) and Black History month (February). Or it could be black people's way of extending the holidays, but nobody is paying attention. It does start on December 26th.

Here is a prime example that nobody is paying attention to Kwanzaa. If you look on a calender it will tell when Kwanzaa starts but not when it ends.

Unlike Hanukkah, which is a real religious holiday period it does have a beginning and end. That leads me to the question, What religious holiday is Kwanzaa? It's not one. It something made up.

Answer 7

I don't know, but I would like to, because I am 50% African-American. I don't celebrate Kwanzaa, I celebrate Christmas, but I would still like to know.

Answer 8

kwanzaa was created about 40years ago, by a black prisoner in the Los Angeles area, who thought that blacks should have their own alternative to Christmas. It is not African and as nothing to do with Africa. I once lived in Africa and I had never heard about it until I came to the USA, its a black pride thing.

Answer 9

nicely Kwanzaa is widely known via the African American, or in basic terms African inhabitants of the worldwide. Its a occasion that's week-long, and it is composed of lighting fixtures a candle for every day. Kwanzaa in Swahili ability the harvest, so its easy to realize that it extremely is a occasion of an incredible harvest in Africa. Yea i don't likely understand Kwanzaa the two, in case you question me, its in basic terms a huge opposition between Hanukkah and yuletide. subsequently the candles, and the banquet! Seeing as though it grew to become into invented via the yankee government, in the 60's exhibits me that it extremely is in basic terms an ethnic holiday that grew to become into put in place to instruct racial equality (christmas being europe, whites, Hanukkah being midsection jap or Asian.) so as they do now the racial minority wanted a holiday for information of themselves in americas ever growing to be u . s . a .. desire I helped you with you question. Monica

Answer 10

Kwanzaa is celbrated by African Americans in celebration of their African Ansectors. Becuase they want a holiday around chirstmas, its stupid.