The festivities – “invented” in 1966 - are based on African traditions, and indeed the very name (from Swahili for “first fruits”) refers to historical African “harvest” celebrations, common throughout Africa, but of course also common in rural areas elsewhere. The themes of the days further seek to revive African communitarian principles, so lost among people of African descent in the Western world.
SIMILARITIES
In this, what they call, neo-African conception, it shares similarities with Rastafari as a movement, but also differences. The similarities are in the reconnecting with the African roots of Black people in the Americas. The differences are in the sense that Kwanzaa does not strive to be religious or even spiritual in the strict sense, while Rastafari is a spiritual movement, partly based on “rereading” the Bible from an African perspective.
Other similarities with Kwanzaa as festival, I find from what I know of “neo-African”, or “danced religions”, as some scholars call them: Haitan Vodou, Cuban Santería, Palo Mayombe, Surinamese Winti, and so on.. Again, Kwanzaa does neither have that spiritual component – let alone of “spirit possession” as in these traditions - , but does share the “community” and “structured festivity” aspect with these traditions.
“Community building” seems to be the main goal, all these African-centered movements among Afro-Americans have. The methods differ somewhat.
RASTAFARI
I find it philosophically interesting, that both Rastafari (originating in the 1930s in Jamaica), and Kwanzaa (designed by a Black Power activist and scholar, Maulana Karenga, in 1966), share that connection with the Black Power movement. In the case of Rastafari more through Marcus Garvey and his teachings, in the case of Kwanzaa, and its creator Maulana Karenga, more with (next generation Black Power activists) Malcolm X, Black Panthers, civil rights movement, etcetera.
Since Rastafari is older, Kwanzaa was probably influenced by it, in its conceptions, for instance, besides direct African models. Indeed, its creator Karenga said that one of his influences was Marcus Garvey, so there is a link.
I am more a Rastafari adherent, but still appreciate Kwanzaa’s theme-centered – and positive – focus on community building and self-determination. “Self-determination” is in fact one of those “day themes” in Kwanzaa (the 27th of December): defining oneself.
That’s why I started to celebrate it a bit.
It is, by the way, today mainly celebrated by African Americans, and elsewhere in the African diaspora, but there are today also White and other people celebrating it.
I don’t know much about the inventor of Kwanzaa, Maulana Karenga, but read more and more about him.. He had a turbulent life, but also some interesting and inspirational ideas. His later distancing of Kwanzaa from any specific religion can be deemed tactful, so as not to alienate African Americans considering themselves Christian or Muslim. Even some Rastafari adherents celebrate it, also here in the Netherlands.
Perhaps, the Rastafari movement is too loosely organized for such “structured” festivities, and some miss that (although Haile Selassie’s coronation and birth dates are regularly celebrated among Rastafari, world wide).
Since Rastafari is older and international, and I personally got into it way before in Kwanzaa, I find it interesting to compare the two, specifically hoping to deduce what Kwanzaa has to offer what was not there before, especially to repair the cultural identity within the African diaspora.
RELIGION
Christianity is – or rather: became – a mainly European religion, “Europeanized” over time. Islam started mainly as an “Arab” religion, and – while spread among various peoples – it still is largely “Arab” in its orientation. So African Americans belonging to some Protestant churches, or to the Nation Of Islam, kind of “compensate” through a focus on African cultural principles, guiding Kwanzaa days. A difference, as said, with Rastafari, being more a faith in itself.
Interestingly, there is a similarity with e.g . Vodou or Santería, in that a European Catholic Church-focus is responded to with African retentions, also spiritually. Likewise in Africa itself, European Christianity or Arab Islam, is often mixed or alternated with indigenous spirit faiths.
Neither Kwanzaa nor Rastafari seem to promote so much the “spirit possession” aspect of the African heritage. Their progressive aims seemingly left little room for such “backward”-seeming magic, although Euro-Christian propaganda (calling it ”devilish”) also created a distancing. There is after all a strong Protestant Christian influence in both Jamaica and the US.
BLACK POWER
The primary focus on the own Black community, of the Kwanzaa days, shows a Black Power influence, in which Jamaican Marcus Garvey played a pioneering role.
This “reconstructing” of a damaged identity because of slavery and deracination, certainly is a key element in Kwanzaa.
Yet, I argue, its principles and concepts are quite universal. The concept of “harvest festivals”, “eating together”, and passing-down values, are found historically in all cultures, in different ways.
The seven “theme days” of Kwanzaa, might betray its creator (Karenga)’s academic and scholarly past. It has theoretical, verbal “themes”, meant to structure intellectually a reality, that normally is just “lived” as part of community life. Universal, but with an African dimension.
Still, being a bit “academic” myself, I can see the value of that categorizing intellectually: it sharpens thinking and the focus on, importantly, positive notions. Notions that are, in turn, much more broadly human, than what can what can be categorized or even put in words. Thinking without overthinking.
INVENTED TRADITION
Some speak in such cases as Kwanzaa of “invented tradition”. I heard it in sociology classes I followed, but never cared much for the term. I find it subtly demeaning and negative. Partly it seems neutral, but it ridicules unjustly, I think. Even if originating or “invented” later, a tradition/custom can still be based on real, cultural traits living – if dormant – among specific populations. The cultural loss due to Trans-Atlantic slavery was destructive, yet not fully. African culture was maintained, and partly reworked, still with the underlying African cultural values.
Kwanzaa is an interesting example of that.
COMMUNITY
Additionally, I argue that the “community values” expressed within Kwanzaa, are not only relevant to the African Diaspora worldwide, but also to the whole of humanity, certainly also in this “corona crisis” time. In it, governments feel entitled to interfere with people’s social life and contacts, even more than decades before, with as excuse an infectious flu virus. Plandemic, New World Order, some think. Others think it is actually about health, ignoring the trampling of rights and freedoms we were used to. In psychology that is called “cognitive dissonance”.
I myself begun to think it is indeed a plandemic, because they did not involve the people they claimed to protect, and because of the world’s rich elite behind it (now united under the World Economic Forum - the WEF -, in part inheritors of the Bilderberg group), with accumulated wealth going back even to colonial times. Of course, my mistrust was awakened when these peoples started to tell us how we should live our lives..
I can study actual scientific sources (even did that professionally, once), and unfortunately my suspicion was confirmed after studying the actual (relatively limited) danger of that virus, and the actual (non-health) interests behind them. Therefore I added the L to pandemic (pLandemic) too.
From a bird’s view – or in modern terms: zooming out – it involves mass dehumanization, as well as “infantilization”, as we are commanded like we are children, and our natural, human urges are being criminalized. The history of specific Black/African Americans shows much more extreme and prolonged experiences of dehumanization, starting with trans-Atlantic slavery, or even earlier with the Arab slave trade in Africans. This was followed by centuries of exclusion, poverty, and discrimination.
LESSONS
As the most experienced usually teaches the novice, the new learner, in this case the accumulated wisdom from suffering from the Black Power movement since Marcus Garvey, and the civil rights movement in the US, more or less are summarized in the themes of Kwanzaa. The wisdom of community life, precisely that being under attack with this plandemic (probably for “divide and conquer” purposes). This experience can offer useful lessons for people now confronted with sudden dehumanization and restrictions.. “Sudden” when compared to the relatively freer democratic periods in Europe after WW II, Fascism, and Communism..
The state and political class now turned again dictatorial, bad-intentioned and only self-interested, and is – like in Mussolini’s Fascism – aligned with Big Business (which includes Big Tech and Big Pharma), and these rich elites behave as adversaries of the common people. Therefore: strengthening community life – the actual people – is the only answer toward and solution for a free life. Community is the basis of Kwanzaa.
I know, it was intended for Black redemption specifically within the African Diaspora, and for an oppressed racial minority in the US context, but universally Kwanzaa can, I argue, still offer good building stones for an alternative for the New World Order (NWO), the rich elite in this world wants (for which Covid policies prepare the ground).
This alternative for the New World Order/New Normal by necessity has to be at the benefit of the people, not a small elite thinking themselves to be superior because of their accumulated wealth. The open global plans for Agenda 2030, the Great Reset of the WEF, and a 4th Industrial Revolution.. that is what this elite wants..
Does this combine with the world Kwanzaa (or its followers) want? Of course not..
PRINCIPLES
More specifically, the seven African principles of Kwanzaa (called Nguzo Saba), or “theme days”, of Kwanzaa can demonstrate that (full description of these you can for instance find on the Wikipedia page on Kwanzaa):
UNITY
This first day of Kwanzaa (orig. for Black Unity) - the 26th of December - calls for communication, and free gathering. Well, this has been discouraged since March 2020, with all these draconian covid-related policies.
SELF-DETERMINATION
Independent thinking has also been discouraged during this totalitarian approach. It specifically “narrowed our frame” toward a hyped-up flu virus, disregarding our true interests, and the actual wider world. Censorship is also part of the current totalitarian approach.
COLLECTIVE WORK /SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
The key word is equality. The shared responsibility comes from within and is therefore proven true, not forced from above. False senses of solidarity can after all be easily manipulated by powers that be, as dictatorships and variants of Fascism earlier in history showed. This is what happens now, as the “fear” for a relatively mild virus is being misused.
COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS (OWN BUSINESSES)
For some reason, the corona policies, this plandemic, attacks small to medium businesses, while enriching and empowering bigger businesses, meant to replace them.
Thinking about it, this means that independently starting your own business for a specific community will be made difficult. They want more control by the Big State-Big Business over them.. Therefore more money and power to the richest elites, but also limiting freedoms of possibly rebellious, independent-thinking communities.
PURPOSE (COMMUNITY BUILDING GOALS)
With repressive governments/regimes, being open about your ambitions can be dangerous. The corona policies were even at times “opportunistic”, restricting what they saw people do (the terrible sin of “groups having fun” somewhere).
Marcus Garvey said that Black people’s plans “is their own business”, and need not be disclosed for “approval” by the White man.
Doing instead of talking, is therefore important here, and letting natural human characteristics flow, among people.
“Let respect just groove around”, as Curtis Mayfield sang.
CREATIVITY
This plandemic is a war against culture, and against joy, as a forebode to the joyless/modern slavery-like New World Order. It is also an attack on freedom. This is because freedom and joy/cultural expression inherently go together, and can never be separated for long.
FAITH
Whatever spirituality one adheres to, the very spirituality goes against the “material”, numbers/figures focus of this plandemic. The obsession with (manipulated, false) numbers (contagion/infection) is psychopathic. Cold, lifeless numbers to keep the masses scared.
As a Dutch comedian (Theo Maassen) once joked: “some things are too terrible for words, but never for numbers”... Spirituality = humanity = life.
I therefore recommend a Kwanzaa World Order instead of a New World Order, to abandon this dystopian “corona plandemic” way and route.
It is possible, even if it seems – as people with wicked and evil plans always present it – inevitable, or unescapable. We should and can go another way.
CONCLUSION
My “research question” or “thesis” – to put it academically – in this post was broadly: what is the added value of Kwanzaa?
For the Black struggle in the US and internationally, it seems to thrive, though up to now never eclipsing the best-known festivity known as Christmas, in its characteristics (Santa Claus, trees, reindeers, etc.) of German/Anglo-Saxon origin, besides the Christian/Jesus reference. Only later Christmas went also to the “Latin” world: South Europe and Latin America, and in fact global.
Kwanzaa is more African-based in its characteristics, and has a cultural and social focus. It achieved some popularity among African Americans, and Black people elsewhere, often combined with other celebrations. It affirmed and strengthened their sense of identity and cultural pride: these are important.
I see the global corona policies as – among other things – a “war against culture”, as I sing in one of my songs. I came to conclude this definitely, after studies showed the draconian measures “limiting contacts”, “lockdowns”, and “curfews”, had NO effect on virus spread. Governments just want more “control” over the people: attacking/limiting/changing their culture is a way to do that.
Kwanzaa is about reviving a repressed culture, promoting positive, constructive values. Exactly those values that are now under attack with the plandemic that prepares the way for a New World Order of technocracy, control, and stakeholder capitalism.
Kwanzaa values are on the other hand based on community life, and from the bottom-up: sharing, cooperation, but also own choices and identity. Compared to the NWO/WEF/New Normal values they are much more African, and also much less materialistic. Kwanzaa expresses mainly cultural and immaterial goals. These are more important, even if money addiction is widespread among all races. Numbers are lifeless and never end, so cannot give inspiration and joy by themselves. In essence it is not just a battle between freedom or slavery, but in a deeper sense also – philosophically – between “life” and “death”, between “good” and “evil”.
It is therefore much bigger than “race” as such. In certain epochs a focus on “race” was necessary in the Americas. Marcus Garvey did good works regarding this. The Mighty Diamonds sang, Garvey “gave the black man self-respect”, and many other Reggae artists (e.g. Burning Spear) praised him for this too. This self-respect is aimed at humanity, and is needed now among all groups affected by the plandemic .
Those content or agreeing with even the strictest of corona policies – let’s say: non-socializing, fearful types -, or still believing the covid/”killer virus” narrative, are difficult to save right now. For the others, more skeptical and critical, Kwanzaa’s community/culture values seem now more required than ever. Even urgent.
In addition, when all this nonsense is over – or in parts of the world with much less strict corona policies/influence - Kwanzaa values would be good values, I opine, because of their immaterial, sharing “community” and more “human” and “popular” base. It is a good antidote to the cold "power" governments seek, and “money” capitalists seek. As Marcus Garvey – one of the several inspirers of Kwanzaa – wrote already in 1927, in his long poem ‘The tragedy of white injustice’: “Cold capitalists and money sharks, make life unsafe, like ocean barks”.
Now with this plandemic (as during Mussolini’s Fascism) with politics and big business (and press, judiciary etc.), combined power/control and money into one big totalitarian whole, toward a New World Order/New Normal. Beneficial to a small elite, restrictive and repressive to the dependent rest.
Instead of this New World Order, I therefore propose a Kwanzaa World Order..
That is what my celebrating Kwanzaa at the end of 2021 – more structured and focused than before – taught me: its “community life” values are needed in this world.
