I have always wondered if the reason Kwanzaa isn’t celebrated more enthusiastically isn’t so much that it’s a “made up” holiday, but because most black folks in the US are Christian, or at least come from a Christian family/culture. The holiday season from Thanksgiving through Christmas is pretty busy, and I figure people don’t see the need to squeeze another holiday in there. It almost makes me wonder if the idea would be more successful if it was placed at another time of year, when people have more time to reflect on what the meaning of it is supposed to be.
You should read all the post before commenting. I said there were made up elements to Christmas and Hanakkah, that is invented and not flowing naturally out of tradition. However you could come up with better examples than the tree which did evolve naturally out of several traditions. It wasn’t made up by one guy and forced on the country. I didn’t even get into things like Valentines Day and Mother’s Day, “holidays” I resent because of their obvious commercial beginnings. I acknowledged the made up origins of some aspects of Christmas and Hanakkah. I said the origins would not matter much to me if a large number of people actually celebrated it. That does not seem to be the case. In my own experience I don’t know anyone who celebrates. I came here where there are people from all over the country and the world and I have not seen anything to change my opinion.
All holidays are “made up”. I took Loach to mean that Kwanzaa is not a celebration centered around commemorating a specific person or event.
bolding mine
I am having trouble seeing Kwanzaa as being forced on anyone. I am black, and I never heard of it until my teens (that would be the mid-to-late 1970s.) None of the African-Americans I know celebrates it, or feels compelled to do so. Certainly no one expects anyone outside that ethnicity to actually celebrate it, though others can take part. And I don’t seen any hardship (implied by the word “forced”) involved in anyone simply learning about it or acknowledging its existence.
Holidays do not occur in nature. Of course they are made up. I used the term to illustrate the difference between a holiday that has evolved over hundreds or even thousands of years and one that some person came up with 20 years ago. I suppose I should have used the word “invented” instead of “made up”.
I probably didn’t write it well. I didn’t use the word “forced” directly towards Kwanzaa. It was in reference to why a large portion of the population has a Christmas tree. One guy didn’t come up with it and we were all forced to put one in our house. It evolved naturally out of mostly German traditions with a big boost from Queen Vicky. I never said or thought that Kwanzaa was forced on anyone. It does seem to me that it is given much more weight than is warranted by how few people actually celebrate it. It may be different in other places but in my daughter’s school it was put on equal footing as Christmas and Hanakkah.
One aspect of Kwanzaa that hasn’t been mentioned yet is that it’s an inherantly racist holiday. It was created specifically for blacks, and people of any other race are excluded. Other ethnocentric holidays, like Hanakkah or St. Patrick’s day, are traditional holidays brought over from the old country, whereas Kwanzaa comes from California and was created within the lifetime of almost everyone alive today. Also, even if it wasn’t intended to replace Christmas, its position on the calendar (starting December 26th) suggests that Christmas is somehow not good enough for an African American.
I’m white, if it makes a difference.
I think it would make a nice holiday in, say, April, though. Or August or something. I mean, if it were for all of us, you know, and not just middle and upper-class black people in California.
Hmmm…I didn’t know you wanted a day off in August, Zsofia.
Uhhh, Diceman?
Even though I lurked here for a long time before joining, I don’t have enough familiarity with your posts to be able to make a guess at any character traits that might more or less accurately be ascribed to you, so I need to ask if you if your post here was a whoosh. Was it? I mean, a big, fat one?
What Diceman said is pretty much straight from the mouth of the creator of Kwanzaa (per Wikiepdia, FWIW)- he created it to give blacks an alternative to celebrating Christmas and to give them a holiday for themselves and not to just go along with other exisiting holidays- I don’t see how you can be more exclusionary or race-centered than that.
Race-centered does not equal racist, which is the word Diceman used. It would only be so if persons of other ethnicities were forbidden to take part in the holiday. To use Diceman’s other examples–if I join in a St. Patrick Day celebration, or took part in the rituals surrounding Hanukkah, they would still not be my holiday–they belong to the ethnic/religious groups who originated them.
Likewise, just because a holiday belongs to another group, doesn’t mean others can’t take part. I doubt very much that there is a jackbooted African-American PC squad ready to arrest me if I decided to observe Kwanzaa and include my Italian-American husband and step-kids.
P.S.
You know what the trouble with a lot of racially-based topics is? One ends up coming to the defense of practices one doesn’t really care about, just because words like “racist” get tossed around in an inflammatory manner.
Because of that, I never got around to mentioning I think Kwanzaa is pretty silly in a sort of hippy-dippy crunchy granola sort of way. I also think it is irrelevant to most peoples’ lives.
Well, you could include them, but it would be going against the intent of the inventor of the holiday, who says in no uncertain terms it is for black people to celebrate their black heritage. A Wikipedia quoted estimate of the number of US celebrants is 4.7 million, which is an obvious exaggeration- that would mean about 1 in 8 US blacks celebrate it, which I think the informal poll here shows is not the case.
KayElCee- I agree.
KayElCee- I agree that race based posts are always very popular. I can’t speak for the OP (even though we share the same view on this), but I believe the rationale behind the post was not to bash another race, but more an indictment of the US media in that they would give so much pub to something that only small fraction of the population cares about, probably because they either have no clue as to what real people do, or that are so petrified of appearing racist.
It doesn’t matter what he intended. Once you release something into the world, it becomes what people make it. That is the way traditions work. Things get added, things get subtracted. I’m sure the early Christians would be surprised (and possibly dismayed) but what Christmas has become, but it is what it is.
I have no quarrel with the OP (neither the Original Poster, nor the Original Post). This seemed like an straightforward poll question to me, with no particular racial agenda. The OP was not the person who tossed the word “racist” into the discussion, and so my remarks about racial discussions were not directed at him.
That is one hell of an estimate.
I think it’s not too dead to resurrect - here’s an article from this morning’s paper about how nobody in South Carolina really cares about Kwanzaa. Star quote: “But Khurhu — who answers his store telephone with the greeting “The oracle speaks” — said he and other blacks continue to celebrate the holiday.”
Well, there is, but they always show up at the same time as the jackbooted African-American PC squad that’s trying to force the holiday on the whole country, and they all get stuck trying to walk through the front door at the same time.