Word: kwanzaa
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Dates: during 1991-1991
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...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...
...final night of the holiday, friends and relatives join the family for a feast known as the Karamu. This year a compendium of celebratory recipes has been published in Eric Copage's Kwanzaa: An African-American Celebration of Culture and Cooking (Morrow; $25). The book also contains stories about black history and culture, along with suggestions on how to use them to illustrate the seven principles...
Museums and other institutions have begun to adopt the celebrations. Last year more than 8,500 people attended poetry readings, music performances and puppet shows during the sixth annual observance at Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History. The Smithsonian added a program of Kwanzaa activities to its Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations...