Because, Well, This IS the Year to Know About This
By: Julia E Hubbel
Tags: Kwanzaa, Holidays, Society, Africa, Culture

Photo by ray rui on Unsplash

If you and I feel strongly about being an ally, then….

Cultured editor Allison Gaines just saved me a buncha time. I was getting all ready to write about Kwanzaa, and she already did. Here you go:

This holiday, which began in 1966, celebrates African heritage and roots. There is great room for you to be religious, in whatever form you wish, and also celebrate Kwanzaa from today until New Year’s day, without offending anyone’s particular God.

Allison’s article is richly detailed and researched, with far more history than I am offering. I really want you to read her piece. This is just to support her and to ask you to consider educating yourself about this holiday and why, as she says, it really is VERY important right now.

Today is Boxing day, but it’s also something that you and I as White folks can both acknowledge and support. NO it’s not religious. The language is Swahili, which, although that particular language is very widely spoken (and sadly, is forcefully replacing many native dialects in Tanzania, just one country where it’s common), the idea behind it is universal.

Here’s a bit of history for those of us who may not be familiar with the holiday:

First. Well, surprise, not every Black person celebrates Kwanzaa, any more than every person born in Israel celebrates Hanukkah.

Second, not all Africans speak Swahili. While nobody really knows for sure, there are about 1500–2000 languages and dialects. Africa is, well, huge. Languages don’t honor borders, any more than tribes do. It’s a magnificently complex and massive continent.

Kwanzaa is the brainchild and creation of Dr. Maulana Karenga. If you want to see a profile in Black Excellence, please visit:

For my part, Dr. Karenga is the perfect example of the passionate intellectual.

Despite so many beliefs to the contrary, Dr. Karenga is in excellent company. There are a great many extraordinary people just like him from all over Africa who hold multiple degrees, often earned in American institutions (kindly, I’ve met quite a few over the years), and who give absolute lie to the notion that the so-called “dark continent” is peopled primarily by savages boiling white explorers in a cookpot.

If you will kindly please.

This day, and for the next five thereafter, you can, if you choose, join with a great many folks to celebrate and honor principles that we seem to have lost as a nation. We need them badly right now. With a tip of the hat to Alison, here’s what Kwanzaa asks us to honor (this is for those who don’t read the links:

KWANZAA is an African American and pan-African holiday which celebrates family, community and culture. It is based on African first harvest celebrations organized around five fundamental kinds of activities: in gathering of the people; special reverence for the creator and creation; commemoration of the past; re-commitment to the highest cultural values; and celebration of the Good.

I can’t speak for you or anyone else. As we struggle through this day, a day when so very many of our communities of color are facing ruin on top of loss on top of everything else because of a president who would prefer to play golf than lead, who cares more about whether his wife got a fashion magazine cover than to sign a critically important bill that is vastly too little too late…

We need to gather as a nation . We need to humbly have reverence for what created us, and thank All That Is for what led us to today. We badly need to reach to that which is much higher than our base needs, hates and impulses and touch those cornerstones of our collective cultures which make up a nation in terrible need of its people. And we need to celebrate, recognize, acknowledge and speak to the Good that is you, in me, in all of us.

That is Kwanzaa.

I am lighting my candles today. For she is my sister, she is my family, and when she suffers, so do I. So do we all.