Merry Christmas! Happy Channuka! Happy Kwanzaa!
There are two dualling aspects of my personallity that come out around this time of year. One part of my personallity appreciates the fact that American and corporate culture as of late takes great strides to not exclude people. Another part asks whether there are actually Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa.
In one episode of Futurama Bender takes over the role of the robotic Santa Claus and runs into Kwanzaabot, who promptly displays a book entitled What The Heck Is Kwanzaa that has a bunch of confused kids on the cover. That is how I think most Americans view this holiday.
Christmas is ingrained into the American tradition. Channuka is ingrained as well, albeit to a lesser degree. I have yet to meet anyone who actually celebrates Kwanzaa, though.
I am not saying this is a bad holiday. As this site attests, many of the traditions around the holiday are very laudable. My complaint is that including Kwanzaa with Christmas and Channuka smacks of politically correct posturing.
The purpose of including Channuka is two-fold. First, most Jewish people who honor this holiday do not accept that Jesus is the Christ, so celebrating Christ's birth even indirectly could be a conflict of interest. Also, a substantial percentage of the American population are observant Jews, and so to include Channuka as part of the holidays is relevant.
Kwanzaa, on the other hand, is not a holiday that is celebrated at the exclusion of Christmas by those who honor it, and I don't know yet that many people do honor it. It could be that I am not in the right circles to get to know someone who does celebrate Kwanzaa, but I don't think that I would know many people who did celebrate Kwanzaa even if every single friend I had came from an African heritage.
In truth, I think it's a great thing to tell someone who honors the holiday to have a happy Kwanzaa. I just think it is a mistake to mention it like it is an alternative celebration to Christmas.
Update (September 29, 2010): I have since learned that some people who celebrate Kwanzaa do indeed replace Christmas with it, leaving my argument invalid. You live, you learn.
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4 comments:
I had a friend who was a Christian, but also celebrated Kwanzaa because of his African heritage. He was an activist who tried to rally the African-American community to appreciate their "roots." He didn't see one as a substitute for the other. As I said, he was a Christian so he celebrated both.
If my ancestors had come from Africa, I think I would want to celebrate it as well. It does sound like a time of understanding and appreciating your roots.
Do you know how your friend celebrated Kwanzaa?
most people i know celebrate it by dancing in the nude. It goes back to king david.
I really don't remember the specifics, other then he during Kwanzaa he would dress in traditional African clothing (forget the name of it.) He also spoke on the news about it and what it meant.
He did things all year round, not just during Kwanzaa. He held public addresses and had the news channels cover it. I went to a reading he did at the library on Black History.
The thing I liked the most about him was that his heritage was apart of him but not anymore then his Christianity. He was strong in his faith and our friendship was formed from that.
He felt that if more African-American's would embrace their heritage that they would have a greater sense of belonging in America and would lead to less gangs and violence in their communities. That was where his passion for Kwanzaa came from.
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