Um, all holidays are made up. It irritates me that everyone belittles Kwanzaa because it was made up a lot more recently. There are plenty of reasons not to like Kwanzaa, and just as many reasons to embrace the holiday, but arguing it's synthetic nature is silly. Christmas, Hanukkah, Yalda, etc. These all had to be made up at some time right? No holiday celebrates itself.

Well...I don't mean to belittle Kwanzaa for those who hold deep, fervent emotions for that holiday. But I suspect few do. I'd describe my approach toward it as a sideways look and slight grimmace. The reason being it really is a contrived holiday with questionable motivation behind it. Sort of like Sweetest Day.

At best it is a celebration of African heritage that most African-americans don't really have a strong feeling for. At worst it is an attempt to separate African-Americans from mainstream white culture and replace the slave-maker holiday, Christmas, invented by white Christian devils. Seriously- <link>

There is such a thing as a "natural holiday" (IMHO) which gets more respect because it was inspired by a specific, evocative event and evolves into a celebration because people want to more than because someone tells them they ought to. As such I think Juneteenth appears to be a better candidate for the definitive African-American holiday over Kwanzaa http://www.juneteenth.com/. Young African-Americans seem to agree.

Lest I seem biased I would suggest that Hannukah falls partially into the contrived holiday status. It was a minor Jewish holiday about some oil and and a civil war which got elevated because it occurs in December and the Jewish kids felt left out. I say with confidence that very few jews feel the emotional attachment to Hannukah that most Christians (and secularists even) feel about Christmas.

But why do you even care enough for the sideways look and the grimace? Do you feel the same about other Holidays contrived in the 20th century? Father's Day, Mother's Day?

As for ideologies of racism (and religious bigotry) attached to Holidays -- that isn't even a stretch, is it? You don't really think that Kwanzaa is the one race-based holiday?

Appreciate your posts. Happy Holidays.

I don't think there is any such thing as the definitive African-American holiday. I also fail to see why an increase in popularity of Juneteenth would have have any negative impact on Kwanzaa. If anything it would encourage Blacks to celebrate based on their experience and history, which can only be good for Kwanzaa.

I also think that Kwanzaa is an African-American celebration, while Juneteenth is an American holiday. For comparison, Easter is a Christian holiday while Memorial day is American.

What I want to know is when are ALL of the legal citizens of this country going to be identified, by themselves and others, as AMERICANS? As long as certain groups of people continue to hold onto a past they never experienced and demand to have a hyphenated national identity things will not improve.

Um, all holidays are made up. It irritates me that everyone belittles Kwanzaa because it was made up a lot more recently.

Um, thanks for a useless association fallacy. Christmas, or Saturnalia, or Yule, has been celebrated by Europeans for thousands of years. It wasn't made up in someone's back yard a month ago.

And it certainly wasn't made up in angry response to others else having a good time that we "can't" join in with because we don't like them. All that time it has genuinely celebrated actual occurrences, it does not pretend to do so in order to oppose some other celebration.

If you don't see the difference, there's nothing else that can be done for you.

I think you missed the point Larry. At some point in history Christmas and every other holiday was made up. It doesn't matter if it was 1000 years ago or 100000 years ago. His point was that they were all contrived.

Well, yes, they were all made up, but the difference is that there are some holiday traditions that have sort of evolved organically, as it were, over the course of thousands of years, and then there are the ones that somebody just made up all at once. The latter feel artificial, like they were forcefully imbued with meaning, whereas the former feel like they came about more naturally. Is it all just down to 'feelings'? Sure. But that's the problem with traditions and holidays.

Now, me.... I wasn't aware people actually thought about Kwanzaa enough to criticize it. But I'm a pampered suburban white girl, so it's not meant for me anyway. If it makes people happy, I say they celebrate away.

Good points Lilitu.

Also note that whenever those "organic" traditions came about I am sure that some folks thought they were hokey as well. Time will tell.

Agreed that all holidays were made up at some time.

The point is not the holiday's origin, but the way it is celebrated. If it is a celebration of universal values, just rooted in some culturally specific event or concept, no problem. If it is a celebration of any values and also rooted in ethnic distinctions, it leaves a bad taste.

Kwanzaa seems to promote values we can all agree on. And no doubt some (most?) who celebrate it will emphasize these values first. When it becomes a celebration of specific ethnicity (no matter how crudely drawn - Africa is an awfully diverse place), though, the suggestion that Kwanzaa's noble values belong first to that ethnic group (and not to other cultures, ethnic groups, etc.), it will make non-celebrants a bit jittery (like when people refer to members of the same ethnic group with an implicitly exclusive term such as "brother").

Bottom line: Best to let people celebrate as they wish, not second-guess intentions.

Oh by all means! I don't think anyone here (well, maybe Larry) is suggesting people should stop celebrating Kwanzaa.

But it is a new contrived holiday. As Cod and others note all holidays started new somewhere in time. And I'd suspect many of them were viewed questionably by others who didn't celebrate them in the beginning.

Who knows how many holidays were initiated, faltered, died and were forgotten? I am suggesting that for Kwanzaa to become accepted on an equal par with Christmas it will need to pass through some difficult times and persevere and grow and become deeply inspirational to many, as Christmas did. My observation that Juneteenth seems more inspiring to more African-Americans is simply an observation which others may disagree with.

Not fair to compare it to Mother's Day and Father's Day since the population of people who don't have or don't care about parents is a sort of small minority.

Almost anything in human society is made up. We live our lives according to cultural demands, not instinctual ones, as animals do. Therefore, if you are going to belittle the observance of a millennia-old celebration because it is 'made up', then you might as well belittle anything we do as human beings.

Larry's point is that Kwanzaa did not develop as a result of some ancient human tradition, as Christmas/Saturnalia/Solstice did, celebrating, as they all do, the return of sunlight after December 21, the shortest day of the year. Kwanzaa developed out of an impulse to counter the dominant cultural trend and offer a segment of the society its own specific holiday.

no mention of the convicted murderer who started it all.....

OICU812 points out something that does seem to be conveniently missing from the conversation. And, that very same inventor was quite the supporter of communism/socilaism...hence the "Collective work and Cooperative economics" Why no mention of that either?

If a group wants to find unity then do so with that which actually belongs to them. As it is, the Swahilli that gets used as the uniting language would be entirely foreign to almost every single one of the ancestors of modern day blacks in America. History would tell that their ancestors likely came from West African nations while Swahili is a language particular to the east coast of Africa...thousands of miles away. No more a uniting element than the Polish language would be to modern day decendents of Frenchmen, Dutch, and Swedes seaching for commonality. But hey, chances are those people would all be white skinned and originally from Europe, so why not?

True enough, though. Celebrate what you want. Just don't get bent out of shape when some people scoff at the more absurd celebrations. After all, if your Italian neighbors dressed up like Druids and chanted in Russian over a meal of gyros and saurkraut all in the name of bringing their family together you might think them a little ...well, you can supply your own impressions.

Without commenting on the merit of either, I think it's worth separating for the purposes of this discussion two debates: (1) whether it's desirable to make up new holidays and (2) whether it's desirable for groups of people to maintain a culture that deviates from the mainstream.