Looking ahead to the start of Kwanzaa…
December 26 marks the start of Kwanzaa, also spelled Kwanzaa, holiday observed in the US, meant to honor African Americans’ ancestral roots. The celebration lasts until January 1
Kwanzaa comes from the Swahili phrase “matunday ya kwanza,” which means “first fruits,”
The holiday is defined by the seven principals and each day of the festival is dedicated to a specific one, marked by lighting a candle on the kinara, a seven-branched candelabra.
These are the seven principles of Kwanzaa:
Umoja
Umoja means unity in Swahili.
Karenga defines this on his Kwanzaa website as: “To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.”
Kujichagulia
Or self-determination. This principle refers to defining, naming, creating and speaking for oneself.
Ujima
Translated as “collective work and responsibility,” ujima refers to uplifting your community.
“To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together,” Karenga writes.
Ujamaa
Cooperative economics. Similar to ujima, this principle refers to uplifting your community economically. “To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together,” he writes.
Nia
Nia means purpose.
Karenga expands on this principle with, “To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.”
Kuumba
Meaning “creativity,” Karenga defines this principle as “To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.”
Imani
The final principle translates to “faith.”
Karenga defines this as faith in community, writing, “To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.”
I believe that these principles can be applied to any community, it doesn’t matter what race, religion or political party you belong to, it just makes sense for people to uplift each other in our communities and work together no mater where you live you must co exist and work togethe, built each other up not tear each other apart. For if we tear each other apart and do not educate and embrace each other, each other cultures and respect each other , people will never live in peace ☮️ and work together in unity and our children and grandkids will not have a beautiful world to life in and that would totally defeat my purpose, Gods purpose.
