“You don’t have a holiday, you have to make a holiday.”
That was the year Maulana Karenga decided that Black Americans needed a time of cultural reaffirmation.
The second a distinguishes the Black Americankwanzaafrom the Africankwanza.
Simply Recipes / Simone Martin-Newberry
One child was left letterless and weeping at the end of the row.
Occurring annually from December 26 to January 1, Kwanzaa is a time of feasting, and of self-examination.
It was at first celebrated mainly by cultural nationalists who wished to express their Pan-African solidarity.
Simply Recipes / Simone Martin-Newberry
The celebration of Kwanzaa is guided by the Nguzo Saba or Seven Principles.
Each day of the weeklong festival is devoted to the celebration of one of these building blocks of self-awareness.
Our artistic endeavors have redefined Western art forms.
Wherever we have stepped and stopped, our transformational and improvisational skills have changed the country and the hemisphere.
So, we ring in changes and create new riffs on our own holiday.
There are single-parent Kwanzaas, extended-family Kwanzaas, neighborhood Kwanzaas, community Kwanzaas, and even workplace Kwanzaas.
Each Kwanzaa celebration brings something else to the kaleidoscope of possibilities that is the holiday.
My Kwanzaa is informed by two main factors in my life: family and ritual.
My family has always been the nucleus of my being.
I am also an individual steeped in a love of history and tradition.
As a retired teacher and culinary historian, I believe it is important that we know about our past.
I may have been out of sync, but I was always in the spirit.
My personal celebration has usually taken place on only one of the days of the holiday: January 1.
There was music, food, drink, good times, reminiscence, reflection, and communion.
In short, there was Kwanzaa.
The menu was selected to salute my Black American ancestry and my international life.
Each year theres Hoppin John for luck and collard greens for folding money.
Our children need the sense of specialness that comes from participating in a known and loved ritual.
They need the mastery of self-discipline that comes from order.
In brief, they need Kwanzaa as a tool for building their future and our own.
Excerpted from A Kwanzaa Keepsake and Cookbook by Jessica B. Harris.
Copyright 1995, 2024 by Jessica B. Harris.
Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
