Why is kwanzaa so important

Each day of Kwanzaa emphasizes a different principle. Unity:Umoja oo—MO—jah To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race. 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. If there are no children in the home, two ears are still set on the mkeka because each person is responsible for the children of the community. During Kwanzaa, we take the love and nurturance that was heaped on us as children and selflessly return it to all children, especially the helpless, homeless, loveless ones in our community.

Good habits of respect for self and others, discipline, positive thinking, expectations, compassion, empathy, charity, and self-direction are learned in childhood from parents, from peers, and from experiences. Children are essential to Kwanzaa, for they are the future, the seed bearers that will carry cultural values and practices into the next generation.

For this reason, children were cared for communally and individually within a tribal village. The biological family was ultimately responsible for raising its own children, but every person in the village was responsible for the safety and welfare of all the children.

The celebration of fire through candle burning is not limited to one particular group or country; it occurs everywhere. Mishumaa saba are the seven candles: three red, three green, and one black. The speaker, a veteran of the Nashville civil rights movement, spoke about Kwanzaa as a time of memory and celebration.

Wearing an African dashiki, he led those in attendance — blacks and whites and those of other ethnicities — in Kwanzaa songs and recitations. On a table decorated in kente cloth, a traditional African fabric, was a kinara, which contains seven holes, to correspond to the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa. There were three red candles on the left side of the kinara, and three green candles on the right side of the kinara.

The center candle was black. The colors of the candles represent the red, black and green of the African Liberation flag. The auditorium was packed. Those in attendance, young and old, black and white, held hands and chanted slogans celebrating black heroes and heroines, as diverse as the civil rights icons, Rosa Parks and Rev.

Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a cultural observance that acknowledged solidarity with the struggles of the past and with one another. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. The name Kwanzaa comes from a Swahili phrase meaning "first fruits. Red, Black and Green.

Stamp That! The first US postage stamp to commemorate Kwanzaa was issued in There have been 5 designs released since then, the most recent being in A Universal Message. Kwanzaa is rooted in African culture, however, people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds are welcomed to join in the celebration. Star Power. Official Kwanzaa Website. Who Actually Celebrates Kwanzaa?