All around the world and on every inhabited continent in the world, during the week of December 26-January 1, African peoples will celebrate the pan-African holiday of Kwanzaa in various venues of gathering and sharing an inclusive and expansive good. Kwanzaa calls and brings us together in local, national and global spaces in unique and awesomely beautiful ways, first in our centering and practice of the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles which are at the heart and center of the holiday. Also, it involves us in our various identities and allegiances and reinforces the bonds between us as Black people, African people. This is achieved in five fundamental kinds of family and community activities rooted in and reflective of its origins in ancient African first fruit celebrations and their dignity-affirming, life-enhancing and world-preserving values.
Here as we move into preparing for and celebrating Kwanzaa, I want to retrieve and share some ideas and excerpts from my book, Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture (Sankore Press). Kwanzaa was conceived and created in the midst of the Black Freedom Movement as a contribution to that Movement. Thus it was conceived as an act of freedom, a self-determined act with no appeal to or approval from others; as an instrument of freedom to raise and deepen historical and social consciousness in service of our liberation struggle, a celebration of freedom as an achievement in consciousness and an aspiration in struggle, and as a practice of freedom in the embrace of the Seven Principles and using them in the way we live our lives, do our work and wage our liberation struggle.
And Kwanzaa was also conceived and created out of Kawaida philosophy, an ongoing synthesis of the best of African sensibilities, thought and practice in constant exchange with the world. A philosophy of life, work and struggle, Kawaida argued that the key challenge of African peoples is the cultural challenge, the challenge to constantly dialogue with African cultures and discover and bring forth the best of their views, values and practices, ancient and modern, continental and diasporan. And we ought to use these as a foundation to bring into being models of human excellence and possibilities to enrich and expand our lives and strengthen and advance our struggle for freedom, justice and other good in the world.
Kwanzaa, like other African first-fruits celebrations, is organized around five fundamental activities. And these activities are informed by ancient views and values which reaffirm and reinforce family, community and culture. The first fundamental activity of Kwanzaa is the ingathering of the people. Kwanzaa is, of joyful necessity, a time of ingathering. Based on African first-fruits celebrations, it is a harvesting, a gathering of good, the good of the people; a bringing together of the most valuable fruit or product of the nation, its living human harvest, i.e., the people themselves in all their goodness and beautifulness. It is a time of ingathering for the family and of the entire community to renew and reinforce the bonds between them. Kwanzaa stresses the need to constantly seek and stand together on common ground. Indeed, as a cultural holiday, it is practiced by Africans of all religious traditions, all classes, all ages and generations, and all political persuasions on the common ground of our best values and our Africanness in all its historical and current diversity and unity.
Secondly, Kwanzaa is a time of special reverence for the Creator and creation. It is a time of thanksgiving for the good in life, for life itself, for love, for friendship, for parents and children, the elders, adults and youth, man and woman, and for family, community and culture. As a harvest celebration, Kwanzaa is also a time of thanksgiving for the earth and all that is on it, all peoples and all living and inanimate things, animals, birds, field and forest, water, air, land and all natural resources. At the same time, it is a time for recommitment to protect and preserve the earth and relate rightfully to the environment, avoiding and resisting its plunder, pollution and depletion.
Thirdly, Kwanzaa is a time of commemoration of the past. It is a time of honoring the moral obligation to remember and praise “the bridges that carried us over”, those on whose shoulders we stand; and to raise and praise the names of those who gave their lives that we might live fuller and more meaningful ones. It is also a time to appreciate our role as “heirs and custodians of a great legacy” and to recommit ourselves to honoring the legacy by preserving it, living it and expanding it. We are, as African people, fathers and mothers of humanity and human civilization, sons and daughters of the Holocaust of Enslavement and authors and heirs of the reaffirmation of our Africanness and freedom and social justice tradition in the 1960’s. Each period leaves a legacy of challenge, struggle and achievement. And we honor each by learning it and living it. And Kwanzaa is a focal point for this.
Fourthly, Kwanzaa is a time of recommitment to our highest ideals. It is a time of focusing on thought and practice of our highest cultural vision and values which in essence are ethical values, values of the good life, truth, justice, loving, caring, sisterhood, brotherhood and respect for the Transcendent, for the human person, for elders, adults, youth and for nature. It is here that the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles) serve as the central focus of Kwanzaa in sensibilities, thought and practice. Those principles are: Umoja (unity); Kujichagulia (self-determination); Ujima (collective work and responsibility); Ujamaa (cooperative economics); Nia (purpose); Kuumba (creativity) and Imani (faith). And these principles are not only a focus of seasonal celebration and remembrance, but also, a lived and living practice for all seasons and situations.
Finally, Kwanzaa is a time for celebration of the Good, the good of life, family, community, culture, friendship, the bountifulness and good of the earth, the wonder of the universe, the elders, the adults, the young, the human person in general, our history, our achievements, and our ceaseless striving and struggle for liberation and ever higher levels of human life. The celebration of Kwanzaa, then, is a ceremony of bonding, thanksgiving, commemoration, recommitment, a respectful marking, an honoring, a praising, and a rejoicing. And we are each year and day instructed, enriched and uplifted by the practice and sharing of its central and centering principles.
