Today is Creativity Day, if you’re celebrating Kwanzaa

This year marks the 55th annual celebration of Kwanzaa, a holiday established in the United States by an academic in response to the political and social unrest of the 1960s.

Its founder, Dr. Maulana Karenga, said he created it for Black Americans as “an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history.”

Karenga, who is chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach, established from the start in 1966 the traditions and symbols of the holiday, including its seven principals, use of a seven-light candelabra (the kinara), the Unity cup (a wooden challace) and fruit bowl (kwanzaa means fruit in Swahili). He has proposed a myriad of ways for families and communities to participate. Each year he writes an annual message. This year’s is titled, “Practicing Kwanzaa and the Seven Principles: Ensuring the well-being of the world.”

In 2005 Karenga said that 28 million would be participating “on every continent.” Probably most of them are Black families, or families in which some African American members, although an increasing number of non-African Americans are celebrating the holiday.

Kwanzaa in Thurston County

National numbers suggest that more than five thousand people in Thurston County will be observing Kwanzaa today.

Laurel Mack-Wilson grew up in Olympia and celebrated Kwanzaa as a child here. Now in her 20s, she’s introduced the holiday to many of her friends.

“I’d invite my friends over and eat, hang out, tell some stories, plan for the new year. I think they always appreciated the introduction,” she explained, adding, “We used to do Kwanzaa celebrations at church, too.” 

“Kwanzaa is about community, and growing community,” she added, and “We use some of the time to plan our goals for the year. We ask, ‘how can my goals benefit not only me, but my family, Black people, my community for the long run? How do we want to continue to be creative?’”

Laurel’s father, Steve Wilson, Ph.D., a local psychotherapist, explained the universal appeal of the holiday. “We eat together and tell stories. A good part of African and African-American history is oral, stories that have been passed along as parables. We look at stories according to the meaning of each day and think about how we can apply them.”

“Part of how we celebrate is with a book that contains stories in Black history, African history,” Steve said. Its title is The Complete Kwanzaa: Celebrating Our Cultural Harvest, by Dorothy Winbush Riley.

“You can count on food,” Steve added. “There will be different foods from throughout the African diaspora.  Sometimes people do cook African foods, but also Jamaican, South American, Southern US food,” Steve said, “black-eyed peas, greens. Vegetarian, too. Sometimes the food is fried, or salty.”

What’s it about?

Like many holidays, secular, national, cultural or religious, Kwanzaa carries with it themes and values that can be embraced by most anyone.

And like most holidays, it’s a mix of fun with family and friends combined with serious practice. The Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles) provide the structure of each of the holiday’s seven days.  These include:

1. Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
2. Kujichagulia (Self-determination): To define and name ourselves, as well as to create and speak for ourselves.
3. 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.
4. Ujamaa (Cooperative economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
5. Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
6. 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.
7. 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.

Kwanzaa always runs from Dec. 26 through Jan. 1. Today, Friday, Dec. 31, is the Day to reflect on Kuumba.

Families often exchange gifts on the last day of Kwanzaa, which coincides with New Year’s Day. “Unlike other holiday gifts, those given during Kwanzaa are based on education or something handmade,” Steve explained. “We’re not talking about spending lots of money. Instead, ‘here’s something I thought about for you that was personal.’”

“In the 1960s, when Kwanzaa was created, this holiday reminded us that there is a lot about this country that came from black people. We did contribute here,” Steve Wilson explained, adding, “we also claim space in a world where people don’t always want us to claim space.”