Happy Kwanzaa!!

10 Things you didn't know about Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa was conceived in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, who launched the holiday in the midst of the Black Power Movement and a year after the Watts riots tore open the wounds of racial division in Los Angeles. (Karenga later served time in prison in an assault case related to his opposition to the Black Panthers. After being released from prison, Karenga became an Africana studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.) According to The Complete Kwanzaa by Dorothy Winbush Riley, Karenga said he started Kwanzaa as "a necessary minimum set of principles by which Black people must live in order to begin to rescue and reconstruct our history and lives." The holiday is celebrated from Dec. 26-Jan. 1 every year. Estimates about the number of Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa vary widely, with some figures in the millions.

First Fruits
Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday. It is a cultural holiday based on African harvest festivals and the word "Kwanzaa" is based on a Swahili phrase "matunda ya kwanza" (“first fruits”). It's most popular among African Americans, but has also been embraced by black Caribbeans and other subsets of the African diaspora as a way to celebrate Pan-African history and encourage pride in the black community.


Seven Principles
The celebration of Kwanzaa is organized around the number 7. There are Seven Principles of Kwanzaa, each celebrated on a different day. The principles, in order, are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, faith. There are also seven symbols: fruits/nuts/vegetables, place mats, ears of corn, candles, candle holders, communal cups, and gifts. These seven symbols are arranged on a table at the beginning of Kwanzaa. On each day, members of celebrating households gather together to discuss the principles and sometimes read poems or perform music or dance.


On the Calendar
By the 1990s, Kwanzaa was being celebrated alongside Christmas and Hanukkah as a mainstream national holiday, with Hallmark creating Kwanzaa cards and the U.S. Postal Service introducing an official Kwanzaa stamp in 1997. The stamp has been reissued in various denominations four times.



"What's Up?" Swahili Style
Each day of Kwanzaa, participants greet each other with the phrase "Habari Gani", which translates to "What's the News?" in Swahili. The answer, that day’s Kwanzaa Principle.

It's the thought that counts

Expensive gift giving is not a major tenet of the holiday. Although the seventh symbol of Kwanzaa is "gifts," exchanges mostly happen between immediate family members, and often include handmade gifts or books that celebrate African culture. According to The Complete Kwanzaa, the purpose of this modest gift giving is "to avoid the chaos of shopping and conspicuous consumption during the December holiday season."

Colorful symbols

The official colors of Kwanzaa are red, symbolizing the struggles of the African people; black, symbolizing Earth and the African people; and green, symbolizing hope and the future. The Kwanzaa candles are arranged in a holder with a black candle in the middle and red and green candles on the sides. One candle is lit each day of Kwanzaa.

Merry Christmas Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa and other December holidays, including Christmas, are not mutually exclusive. Kwanzaa's official edicts say that it was specifically created as a cultural, and not a religious, holiday, although the holiday's official web site states that "one can accept and revere the religious message and meaning [of Christmas] but reject its European cultural accretions of Santa Claus, reindeer, mistletoe, frantic shopping, alienated gift-giving, etc." Most early practitioners of Kwanzaa did not celebrate Christmas, but the division between the two holidays has faded in recent decade.


A Marketing Opportunity
Despite its organizers' best efforts, Kwanzaa has verged into commercialized territory long occupied by Christmas, with annual marketing campaigns geared specifically for the Kwanzaa holiday. Every year, various "Kwanzaa Expos" are held in cities all over the country. Dancers and musicians perform at the events, while vendors sell Kwanzaa and African-related merchandise.


Fit For A Poet
In 2008, Maya Angelou narrated a documentary called The Black Candle, the first full-length film to be made about Kwanzaa. Directed by M.K. Asante, Jr., the film includes interviews with rapper Chuck D., Kwanzaa founder Maulana Karenga, and NFL star Jim Brown.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Well it's another year....

But for what reason??

"Happy New Year!" That greeting will be said and heard for at least the first couple of weeks as a new year gets under way.

But the day celebrated as New Year's Day
in modern America was not always on January 1st.

ANCIENT NEW YEARS The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon approximately 4000 years ago. In the years around 2000 BC, the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon (actually the first visible cresent) after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring).

The beginning of spring is a pretty logical time to start a new year.
After all, it is the season of rebirth, of planting new crops, and of blossoming. January 1, on the other hand, has no astronomical nor agricultural significance. It is purely arbitrary.

The Babylonian new year celebration lasted for eleven days. Each day had its own particular mode of celebration, It's safe to say that modern New Year's Eve festivities pale in comparison.

The Romans continued to observe the new year in late March, but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun.

In order to set the calendar right, in 153 BC, the Roman senate, declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year. But tampering continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, established what has come to be known as the Julian Calendar. It again established January 1 as the new year. But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days.

THE CHURCH'S VIEW OF NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS
Although in the first centuries AD the Romans continued celebrating the new year, the early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as paganism. But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began having its own religious observances concurrently with many of the pagan celebrations, and New Year's Day was no different. New Years is still observed as the Feast of Christ's Circumcision by some denominations.

During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New Years.
January 1 has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only the past 400 years (give or take).


NEW YEAR TRADITIONS
Other traditions of the season include the making of New Year's resolutions.

That tradition also dates back to the early Babylonians. Popular modern resolutions might include the promise to lose weight or quit smoking. The early Babylonian's most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment to there rightful owners.

The Tournament of Roses Parade, dates back to 1886. In that year, members of the Valley Hunt Club decorated their carriages with flowers. It celebrated the ripening of the orange crop in California.

Although the Rose Bowl football game was first played as a part of the Tournament of Roses in 1902, it was replaced by Roman chariot races the following year. In 1916, the football game returned as the sports centerpiece of the festival.

The tradition of using a baby to signify the new year was begun in Greece around 600 BC. It was their tradition at that time to celebrate their god of wine, Dionysus, by parading a baby in a basket, representing the annual rebirth of that god as the spirit of fertility. Early Egyptians also used a baby as a symbol of rebirth.

Although the early Christians denounced the practice as pagan, the popularity of the baby as a symbol of rebirth forced the Church to re-evaluate its position. The Church finally allowed its members to celebrate the new year with a baby, which was to symbolize the birth of the baby Jesus.

The use of an image of a baby with a New Years banner as a symbolic representation of the new year was brought to early America by the Germans. They had used the effigy since the fourteenth century.

FOR LUCK IN THE NEW YEAR
Traditionally, it was thought that one could affect the luck they would have throughout the coming year by what they did or ate on the first day of the year. For that reason, it has become common for folks to celebrate the first few minutes of a brand new year in the company of family and friends.

Parties often last into the middle of the night after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the first visitor on New Year's Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor happened to be a tall dark-haired man.

Traditional New Year foods are also thought to bring luck. Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes "coming full circle," completing a year's cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year's Day will bring good fortune.

Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another "good luck" vegetable that is consumed on New Year's Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year's Day.

AULD LANG SYNE
The song, "Auld Lang Syne," playing in the background, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.
At least partially written by Robert Burns in the 1700's, it was first published in 1796 after Burns' death. Early variations of the song were sung prior to 1700 and inspired Burns to produce the modern rendition. An old Scotch tune, "Auld Lang Syne" literally means "old long ago," or simply, "the good old days." Can't remember the words? The lyrics can be found here.