Kwanzaa: A Season of Celebration

By Dr. Maulana Karenga, Creator of Kwanzaa
With Kwanzaa comes a special season of celebration, meditation and recommitment. It brings to mind and sets in motion the ancient and uplifting practices of our ancestors gathering together in joyous and thankful harvest celebrations of the good in the world and the good of the world. The good harvests of fields and forests, the good of family, friends and community, the good of life and the living of it fully, and the good of the world itself and all in it. And so in emulation and honor of them, we too gather again together in joy and thankfulness to celebrate the awesome wonder and good of the world: the good given and the good received; the good anticipated and the good achieved; the good we find and bring forth in our families and ongoing friends; the good we create in our communities thru cooperation and collective effort and the good we weave into patterns of possibility and achievement out of the beautiful, ancient and indestructible cloth we call African culture. And always and everywhere we celebrate the good of life, the hope it harbors, the possibilities it promises and the joy it brings in our sharing on every level and in every rightful and rewarding way. In the tradition of our ancestors we too celebrate the awesome wonder and good of the natural world: the beauty and abundance of each season, the magnificence of mountains and meadows, the incalculable treasures of seas and lakes, morning mist over hills and valleys, and the rivers running through them; the infinite yield of trees and plants in fruits and flowers; the rich diversity of peoples and all living creatures; and the fragile yet indispensable links of life that shape, build and bind us together in the world. Thus, Kwanzaa calls on us to care deeply about and consistently for the well-being and wholeness of the world and everything in it. And this means above all to engage always in life-enhancing and world-sustaining practices in our daily lives as well as in the larger world. For in the final analysis, such life and world-respective practices are the ultimate and most meaningful celebration we can make. As a season of meditation, Kwanzaa is a time to pause and pay homage to our ancestors, to give rightful care and consideration to the important issues in our lives and the world and to think deeply and continuously about the meaning and responsibility of being African in the world. Certainly, the morality of memory cultivates in us a profound appreciation for our ancestors, who opened the way and cleared the paths for our safe and successful passage in the world and who taught us to constantly bring forth from inside ourselves, the best and most beautiful, to love and care for one another, to speak truth, do justice and always pursue the good. Moreover, in this season of meditation, we are taught to give rightful and sustained attention to the important issues that affect and shape the way we live and die in the world. Those issues that loom large over the human horizon are those of war and peace; unfinished and ongoing struggles for freedom; the securing of human rights and civil liberties; the reduction and end of unnecessary and structured poverty; providing adequate health care and human services; uplifting the daily lives and raising the aspirations of the masses; creating and maintaining rightful relations with the environment, resisting white supremacist thrusts in the world and continuing the struggle for justice everywhere. Kwanzaa calls us also to recommit ourselves to our highest values. Cultural values that create and sustain the good world we all want and deserve to live in. Kwanzaa calls for recommitment not only to embrace certain essential ethical values, but also to practice and promote them. Building on its origins in harvest celebrations, Kwanzaa carries within it the ancient African ethical teaching that if we sow seeds of goodness everywhere, cultivate them with care and loving kindness, we will reap a good harvest and that when we do we should share it with joy wherever and whenever we can. This call for the cooperative creating and sharing of good in the world is at the heart of the message and meaning of Kwanzaa. As our ancestors taught us in the Odu Ifa, we are all divinely chosen to bring good in the world and we must constantly and eagerly struggle to increase the good and not let any good be lost. To do this they taught, furthermore, we must not simply do good but love doing good, feel and know the joy and justice of doing good, the happiness it brings and the rightness of it for those who do it as well as those for whom it is done. Certainly, during this special time of meditation, we must pause and pay homage to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the dead and the living. We must think deeply about the awesome tragedy and about its meaning to them, to us as a people, to this country and to our ongoing struggle for justice and good in the world. We must continue to insist that the dead be buried with dignity, praise the survivors for their courage and commitment to rebuild their lives and continue to aid them in their efforts. And we must continue to struggle for an accounting concerning the unconscionable official negligence and neglect that aggravated and intensified this the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history. And this accounting can only come thru our commitment and recommitment to our highest cultural values and the ongoing struggle to achieve and secure the good they represent, promise and produce. Kwanzaa, then, is also a special time of recommitment, recommitment to our highest values and the struggle to bring, sustain and increase good in the world that the practice of these values promise. Certainly, at the heart of these values are the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles of Kawaida philosophy and the hub and hinge on which the holiday Kwanzaa turns. Each principle represents not only a central value but a certain practice necessary to achieve and enjoy good in the world. The principles are concerned with how we relate to each other and the world, how we understand and assert ourselves in the world to bring forth the good person and good relations which prefigure and make possible the good world we all want, deserve and struggle for.
(Part II: next week)