Self-determination: Kujichagulia koo—gee—cha—goo—LEE—yah To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves. Cooperative Economics: Ujamaa oo—JAH—mah To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together. Purpose: Nia nee—YAH To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness. Creativity: Kuumba koo—OOM—bah To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Faith: Imani ee—MAH—nee To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
Mazao, the crops fruits, nuts, and vegetables Symbolizes work and the basis of the holiday. It represents the historical foundation for Kwanzaa, the gathering of the people that is patterned after African harvest festivals in which joy, sharing, unity, and thanksgiving are the fruits of collective planning and work. Since the family is the basic social and economic center of every civilization, the celebration bonded family members, reaffirming their commitment and responsibility to each other.
In Africa the family may have included several generations of two or more nuclear families, as well as distant relatives. For this reason, an entire village may have been composed of one family. The family was a limb of a tribe that shared common customs, cultural traditions, and political unity and were supposedly descended from common ancestors.
The tribe lived by traditions that provided continuity and identity. Tribal laws often determined the value system, laws, and customs encompassing birth, adolescence, marriage, parenthood, maturity, and death.
Through personal sacrifice and hard work, the farmers sowed seeds that brought forth new plant life to feed the people and other animals of the earth. To demonstrate their mazao, celebrants of Kwanzaa place nuts, fruit, and vegetables, representing work, on the mkeka. Mkeka: Place Mat The mkeka, made from straw or cloth, comes directly from Africa and expresses history, culture, and tradition.
It symbolizes the historical and traditional foundation for us to stand on and build our lives because today stands on our yesterdays, just as the other symbols stand on the mkeka.
And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the facts that we carry it within us, are consciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.
It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. Ancient societies made mats from straw, the dried seams of grains, sowed and reaped collectively. The weavers took the stalks and created household baskets and mats. Today, we buy mkeka that are made from Kente cloth, African mud cloth, and other textiles from various areas of the African continent. The mishumaa saba, the vibunzi, the mazao, the zawadi, the kikombe cha umoja, and the kinara are placed directly on the mkeka.
Vibunzi: Ear of Corn The stalk of corn represents fertility and symbolizes that through the reproduction of children, the future hopes of the family are brought to life. One ear is called vibunzi, and two or more ears are called mihindi. Each ear symbolizes a child in the family, and thus one ear is placed on the mkeka for each child in the family. On the penultimate day of Kwanzaa—which falls on December 31—celebrants typically hold a banquet, or karamu.
Filled with music and dancing, this feast is a time to rejoice and renew commitments for personal growth in the year ahead. Families often give children small gifts on this day or on the last day of Kwanzaa. The holiday struggled for recognition in its early years, writes historian Elizabeth Pleck in the Journal of American Ethnic History. Although some urban communities adopted it, many Christians and Muslims viewed the secular holiday as antithetical to their beliefs.
Yet Kwanzaa continued to spread by word of mouth and, as it did so, the holiday became known as a celebration of Black family life. In the late s and early s, Kwanzaa broke into mainstream Black culture with features in influential magazines. Rather than replace Christmas, though, most people began to see Kwanzaa as a way to supercharge their holiday season. Kwanzaa became widely recognized in the s and s. In , Bill Clinton issued the first U.
Postal Service issued its first Kwanzaa stamp. By the s, however, media outlets such as the Associated Press and the Root were reporting that fewer Black families were celebrating Kwanzaa. See 13 destinations for African-American history and culture. Estimates of how many Americans celebrate Kwanzaa have varied in recent years, from as few as a half a million to as many as 12 million. USA Today reported in that only 2. In —after another period of racial unrest over the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and too many others—the Root examined whether the holiday might see a resurgence.
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