Happy holiday for those celebrating! What, don't you celebrate the holiday? Is it with the candles that are lit every evening in a row? Is it with the gifts for the kids? Not the one that ended two weeks ago – the one that starts today. Well, Kwanzaa. Don't know? We used Perplexity to make a quick introduction to the holiday in which you will recognize quite a few familiar elements even though you have never heard of it.
Kwanzaa is a holiday invented by Ronald McKinley Everett, who calls himself Maulana Nadavitha Karanga – a professor of black history at the University of California, Long Beach and an activist for the extremist movement that advocates the separation of black-skinned people from any other community they live with, especially those living among Europeans and Americans. It was invented in 1966, as an alternative to the "European" Christmas, as the inventor put it, which concentrates on African traditions.
The holiday is celebrated for a week – almost like Hanukkah – from December 26 to January 1, and similarly, is marked by the lighting of a menorah, called Kinara, which contains "Mishuma Saba" – "seven candles", representing "Ngozo Saba" – the seven principles of the holiday: unity (omoja), self-determination (kojichgulya), collective responsibility (ojima), cooperative economy (ujemaa), purpose (niya), creativity (kumba), and faith (imani), with each day during the holiday dedicated to a different principle. Kwanzaa candles are lit with the three right-handers in green, the three left-handers in red, and the middle in black.
As mentioned, the holiday is a celebration of African-American heritage, and is based on the traditions of harvest holidays in Africa and a number of other things (for example, religious holidays of small religions that Christians used to hate). This is the time for families to gather, give gifts to children (although for them these are usually books, not sweets), share feasts and light the kinara. The name of the holiday is the word "first" in Swahili, indicating the gathering of the initial crop.
In its early years, the holiday struggled for recognition, due to the extreme agenda it was intended to promote – but in the last decades of the last century it was gradually adopted, and all recent US presidents, from George W. Bush (2001-2009) to Joe Biden, issued congratulations to the celebrants.
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