In school my children are being taught all about Kwanzaa as well as Christmas and Hanukkah. This is being done as part of social studies, introducing them to other beliefs and traditions. Seems like they are doing a pretty good job of it but it got me thinking, I don’t know anyone who celebrates Kwanzaa. Admittedly I am now living in an extremely whitebread area, but I grew up in and still work in a very diverse area. Afican-Americans made up about 20% of the population. None of my friends celebrate it. To my knowledge none of my coworkers celebrate it, although they might but don’t mention it. Am I just in some weird Kwanzaa-free zone or is it not celebrated that much? Anyone on the dope celebrate Kwanzaa?
I don’t, but I have held classes where guest speakers have discussed the holiday. I also have friends who light Kwanzaa candles. Apparently it is a big deal around Berkeley, CA, which is where the holiday originated.
I do my part by buying the Kwanzaa stamps at the post office 
I don’t, and I don’t know anyone that celebrates it either. I tried to sell my parents on the idea as a kid (at least partly for the extra gifts to be honest), but it was a no go.
We were just having this discussion last week at work. There’s been an effort by the folks in charge of our very small firm to turn our usual Christmas party into something that is much more of an all-inclusive “holiday” party instead. So as one of three black employees in the office, I got queried about my Kwanzaa preferences. :rolleyes:
I learned a bit about Kwanzaa in elementary school, but I don’t know much about it anymore (outside of what I looked up on Wikipedia when I was questioned last week), and I don’t personally know anyone who celebrates.
I’ve been to three Kwanzaa parties. One hosted by my mother and two hosted by a former teacher. In my experience, most of the participants of the holiday are solidly afrocentric, community-minded, well-educated, and have many like-minded friends. Often they also celebrate Christmas and consider themselves Christian. My mother is an ordained minister. For her it’s not so much that Kwanzaa is an alternative to Christmas, but just a separate celebration. (And it helps that my father would probably kill her if she suggested we get rid of Christmas).
I don’t consider myself a regular celebrant of the holiday (or holidays, as it’s week-long event). I think I could name maybe three of the principals if you were holding a gun to my head. But if you event me to a party, I’m there! I’m all about pouring libations.
No. When I was very young, my mother said that she knew the guy who started it and she didn’t like him very much, so we didn’t bother to celebrate it.
There were people in college who celebrated then, but I don’t remember anyone having grown up with it (and we were young enough to have grown up celebrating).
Geez, I haven’t thought about Kwanzaa since elementary school. We spent as much time on that as Christmas and Hannukah, and I’ve never met anyone who celebrated it.
I have known a couple of black women who made some gestures towards Kwanzaa, but no one I have ever met takes it very seriously. Mostly, it seems to be taught in CA schools.
Since this thread is dying so quickly I can only conclude that Kwanzaa is only something that is taught in school but not really celebrated.
Or that there are only 5 African Americans on the board.
My guess is there are some pockets here and there where it is a big deal, but most African-Americans don’t celebrate it. It gets lip service in school to show diversity and that’s fine, and it gets mentioned every day during Kwanzaa on the local TV news to be politically correct.
That’s pushing it. Everyone on the board is a white thirty-something, just like me. At least, that’s what I think they are, until I find out something that indicates otherwise.
I’ve never celebrated it either, I think it may have been mentioned in HS once.
It’s not even taught in the schools all that much.
Kwanzaa’s not a… boisterous holiday. It tends to be quiet, reflective and it resists commericalization and capitalist exploitation. Even store-bought Kwanzaa cards runs counter to the spirit of the holiday. I’ve only ever heard two “kwanzaa songs” in my whole life.
You really want to get into the holiday, you need to find yourself a karamu somewhere. The karamu is the holiday feast that should give you a stronger sense of what the re-affirmation of the holiday is all about.
I have noticed there’s a strong corrolation of American blacks who are into holistic medicine and vegetarianism and celebrating Kwanzaa.
Well, they always manage to find some gathering for it for the local news stories. For all I know, those are literally the only people in town celebrating.
I have never celebrated Kwanzaa but my family is particularly cynical about the holiday. My aunt was acquainted with Dr. Ron and she has never had anything particularly favorable to say about him. Not that her opinions should detract from the holiday, but they ultimately do. My dad thinks it’s a big joke because of the whole kinara menorah thing. He was also attending Berkeley at the time of the holiday’s invention and he has some issues with Dr. Ron’s southern California criminal activity, which was apparently big news at Berkeley. My mother likes holidays and celebrations but she never really got into Kwanzaa, aside from the decorations. Personally, I cannot thing of a single person that I know well who actually celebrates Kwanzaa. People occasionally send cards, but those are from my extremely afro-centric relatives.
People have been asking me about Kwanzaa since elementary school so I am glad that my mother insisted that I read books on the holiday. I can usually field enough of their questions to give them the general idea. I just do not think that they realize how little I actually care about the holiday though.
So…the country is so PC that they give big pub to a holiday celebrated only by a clutch of people in Berkeley?
I thought it was obvious that I was being snarky due to the lack of response to this thread. I did think we were more diverse than it appears to be.
It seems to be given equal weight with Christmas and Hanukkah at my daughters school. This is a school that has something like three black kids from kindergarten through five. The made-up aspect of the holiday rubs me the wrong way but if it helps teach the children about others then I don’t mind so much.
Thats pretty much why I started the thread. I don’t like the made up aspect of the holiday and it seems to be forced. If it really is being embraced by a large number of people I wouldn’t have a problem with it. After all Christmas and Hanukkah have many made up aspects that can be traced back to the recent past.
Loach, I agree 100% with your observations.
What a coincidence, so do I. 
Can you point me in the direction of a single holiday that wasn’t “made up”, please?
Just because it was made up before your lifetime doesn’t mean someone, somewhere wasn’t once the very first person to say, “Hey, you know what would be really cool? If we just chopped down a whole friggin’ tree and dragged it inside instead of standing out in the cold chopping wood for the fire. We can just break off branches as we need 'em!” And then his wife sighed, wondered to heaven why she married the laziest sonuvabitch in the village, and tied pretty ribbons and baubles to the tree and convinced her sewing circle it was the height of fashion to have a tree in your living room and somehow it was related to the birth of a god.