Word: kwanzaa
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...seasonal greeting to your list: Habari gani. It is Swahili for "What's new?" and the salutation for millions of African Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa, a seven-day holiday that begins on Dec. 26. Inaugurated 25 years ago as a black-nationalist celebration of familial and social values, the festivities are now being embraced by the black mainstream...
...Kwanzaa is patterned after various African agricultural festivals, and the name derives from the Swahili word for first fruit of the harvest. It was created by Maulana Karenga, a black-studies professor at California State University, Long Beach. The purpose of the holiday, he says, is to help black people "rescue and reconstruct our history and culture and shape them in our own image...
Unlike Christmas or Hanukkah, Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday; the festival celebrates seven principles -- unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith -- assigned to each of the days. Observers gather each evening to light one of the candles in the kinara, a seven-cup candelabrum, and discuss how the principle of the day affects their life. Small gifts are often exchanged...
...late 1960s, Kwanzaa was celebrated mainly by the more radical members of the black-nationalist community. But now, says the Rev. Willie Wilson, pastor at Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington, "you find a lot of people trying to return to their roots and cultural values." Each year Wilson's church holds nightly Kwanzaa observances that culminate in a ball, which now draws about 1,000 participants. No one knows precisely how many people observe Kwanzaa, but its biggest boosters are middle-class professionals seeking to give their children a sense of black pride. "My children grew...