Recycled

Re: Kwanzaa ain't kwazy

bsharporflat — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:45:31 GMT

spoken like a politician ;- )

Re: Kwanzaa ain't kwazy

JD Meyer — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:34:21 GMT

I delivered my third presentation for Kwanzaa this winter. We had a really good Kwanzaa this year. Even the mayor was a speaker, and she shared the city's progress in revitalization efforts Now I've done Creativity, Purpose, and Self-Determination. What's wrong with a new holiday? Dr. Karenga was originally motivated by finding a way to cope with the Watts Riots. These virtues can be enjoyed by anyone--not just Blacks; for example, the mayor and I are white.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

Boz — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 06:38:52 GMT

If it really didn't matter, your dream would come true.

Dare to dream!

I dunno

feline74 — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:38:28 GMT

I seem to remember hearing someplace that Christmas was just a minor holiday until the Church decided it needed a winter holiday to distract pagans and recent converts from their old holidays. In that sense, Christmas is itself a contrived holiday.

But in another sense, NONE of them are contrived. Whether you're celebrating Yule, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Hannukah, Ramadan or Diwali, you are celebrating a winter holiday. The fact that so many cultures have them, even cultures with little contact with one another, suggests that there's an intrinsic need for a holiday at this time of year. Given that midwinter is a time of shortages and hardships for much of the world, that would not a big surprise.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

chvynva916 — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:07:55 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

Phocion — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 22:03:48 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

oicuateonetwo — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:28:13 GMT

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

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

divendra — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:17:20 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

bsharporflat — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 11:04:39 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

pcorning — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 21:03:42 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

cod3fr3ak — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:58:39 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

Lilitu — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:16:04 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

cod3fr3ak — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:52:02 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

Larry2 — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:46:10 GMT

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.

Re: Kwanzaa is kwazy

dmac225 — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:51:08 GMT

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.