Kwanzaa celebrates roots, family, community

Seven principles of Kwanzaa

-Umoja (Unity): To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.

-Kujichagulia (Self-determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.

-Ujima (Collective work and responsibility): To build and maintain our community together, and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and to solve them together.

-Ujamaa (Cooperative economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses, and to profit from them together.

-Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

-Kuumba (Creativity): 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.

-Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Source: The Official Kwanzaa Web site, http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org

 

Growing up, Phyllistine Mosley didn’t know anything about Kwanzaa.

“My folks just didn’t think about their roots,” says the Lynchburg resident, who organized a program about the African-American holiday at the Legacy Museum’s Activity Center on Saturday.

An exhibit about the principles and symbols of Kwanzaa will remain up at the center, located at 415 Monroe St., through Sunday.

“Kwanzaa is about getting folks (to) think about their roots, that African-Americans have a culture, and we should celebrate it,” says Mosley, who began celebrating Kwanzaa after learning about it in college.

“It’s a holiday of tradition, culture and family togetherness.”

The holiday’s celebrated from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1.

During that time, families like the Mosley’s light one of seven colored candles, displayed on a candleholder called a Kinara, each day. The black candle represents the people, the three red candles represent the black community’s struggle, and the three green ones represent the future and hope that comes from that struggle.

The Kinara is displayed on a woven mat along with the other symbols of Kwanzaa, which include an ear of corn, the unity cup, gifts and crops.

Mosley has set up several examples at the Activity Center.

The electric Kinara, with bulbs instead of real candles, sits atop a white mat in the center of one large table, flanked on one side by a basket overflowing with fruits and vegetables (the crops) and an intricately carved unity cup and, on the other, a small African carving. A dried-up, browning ear of corn lies in front of the Kinara.

During Saturday’s program, Mosley went over the seven principles of Kwanzaa, called the Nguzo Saba in Swahili: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith (see box for more).

“I live by those principles,” she says. “If you think about it, you can do it all year long as you look at who you are and think about what you do.

“It’s an everyday life thing.”

Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, a professor of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach. The word itself is derived from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza,” which means “first fruits.”

Today, “it’s not an alternative to religion or religious holidays,” says Mosley, who puts up a Christmas tree and a Kwanzaa bush, which is typically decorated with smaller, homemade items, in her home every year.

But that wasn’t Karenga’s original intent, says Kate Chavigny, a Sweet Briar College American history professor.

“He was in the Civil Rights movement to begin with, but then he became involved in what was known as Black Nationalism,” she says. “He kind of moved toward black power.”

He created Kwanzaa as “a ceremony for African-Americans that was not Christian and not Christmas,” Chavigny says. “It was a cultural way, not a political way, of developing a separate black identity.

“It emphasized the black community as a whole, as a separate entity from the white community.”

The holiday caught on — and evolved — in the 1980s.

“Middle-class African-Americans were searching for ways to assert their identities,” says Chavigny. “They adapted it so it wasn’t against Christmas, but it was added to it. It wasn’t against Christianity, but it became compatible with it.

“It’s a celebration of community and the family, especially, and also of individual achievement.”

Beyond the traditional candle lighting, Kwanzaa can be marked in any number of ways, including with a meal, singing, drumming, dancing and storytelling.

Mosley usually celebrates with her grandchildren.

“We do a principle each day at the dinner table,” she says. “We talk about the meaning of each principle and light a candle.”

Lynchburg resident Royal Shiree Jones remembers celebrating it as a kid at the urging of her older sister.

“She was kind of the matriarch of our family,” says Jones, who grew up in Philadelphia. “It wasn’t like a particular activity. With her, it was more lesson-inspired, with a lot of music.”

To Jones, the principles have taken on new meaning as she’s gotten older.

“Kwanzaa (is), basically, an embodiment of all that is good.”