Ploafmaster General

Q: What’s the history behind Kwanzaa, and who decided to make it start the day after Christmas?

A: This question came from my sis-in-law. Way to go, Elizabeth, you finally commented on one of my posts. Took you long enough

Anyway, before I proceed with my answer, I want to preface, because YES, I AM afraid of offending people, and if that makes me a pansy, so what. No shame in being a pansy because I don’t want to upset folks, and I’m not compromising my beliefs in the process.

So conceptually, I have no problem with Kwanzaa. One of my close friends, and a former room mate in College, suggested that I and my apartment mates celebrate with him on year. He taught us all about it, and I can say after my experience that the modern, common celebration of Kwanzaa is purely cultural - and community focused. No black supremacy, no anti-Christian notions. In fact, a lot of the concepts mesh nicely with tenets of Christianity - faith, and unity particularly.

The origins, however, are not so easy to talk about for three reasons.

First, the official Kwanzaa website is so vague in many of its explanations, and so biased towards the positive image of the holiday that it avoids any difficult questions. No reason is given for why the holiday starts the day after Christmas, and runs for a week through New Year’s Day.

Second, it’s difficult to find any clear historical research without digging through the emotionally charged opposition. Most opponents tie the holiday to the founder’s criminal and Marxist past, and allege strong Afrocentrism and anti-white sentiment. The WikiPedia entry isn’t very reliable since a fair number of its sources are fierce opponents, whether black or white. While the founder does have a criminal and Marxist past, it is a logical error to assume that the holiday and its celebration are problematic. And while the holiday is indeed Afrocentric, it is neither exclusionary nor anti-white.

Finally, the media speaks about Kwanzaa like its walking on wet rice paper with soccer cleats. Almost nothing about its past is explained, and almost nothing (and what little is often incorrect) about why it starts the day after Christmas.

So…since the question is about it’s history and the reason for its date of celebration, I’ll keep that part of the answer rather short. I’ve done some further digging to shore up my response, so rest assured, I’m not just jumping on one bandwagon or another.

Kwanzaa was started in 1966 by Ron Karenga to provide a holiday for blacks in America that celebrates their own history and culture. It was during Karenga’s leadership of a black nationalist group in California, and the latter stages of the Civil Rights movement in America, that the holiday was developed, so it’s no surprise that a need was felt to celebrate the pre-slavery African heritage of most blacks in the United States. Kwanzaa’s visibility and broader celebration didn’t begin until sometime around the turn of the 21st century. The name and terms for objects/rites come from Swahili, according to Karenga, so blacks wouldn’t realize it was an American holiday. He felt that blacks wouldn’t celebrate it if the thought it wasn’t actually African.

This admission by Karenga comes right before his reason for choosing the day after Christmas in a May, 1978 interview with the Washington Post. Karenga said, “…I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of Bloods were partying.” Since the LA gang, The Bloods, wasn’t formally organized by this time, it’s assumed that Karenga was using a slang term for black people in his interview. As much as Karenga’s statement sounds like a throw-away comment, or a trivialization of the date chosen, it supports the notion that Kwanzaa was originally created as an alternative holiday for black people, whose cultural history didn’t include Christmas until they were brought to America as slaves.

Okay, there’s my answer, and a foray into a “hot” topic. I’m sure I’ll get some fun comments about this one. Maybe.

Keep your collective eyes peeled for the next installment!