The Atlantic - Latest Comments in The war on Kwanzaa

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

BITTER — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:59:06 -0000

Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa Kake should not be taken seriously by anyone in their right mind who pays even the slightest attention to Kwanzaa. She is a complete idiot - the cake is so culturally insensitive and borderline offensive. Those acorns are CORN NUTS for heaven's sake! With hypertension and diabetes running rampant in our black community, that cake, laden with that store-bought, heavy, sickeningly sweet icing would be the last thing to put on the Kwanzaa harvest table.

I'm surprised Sandra hasn't been called on the carpet by Kwanzaa pundits, or Mr. Karenga himself.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Chryss — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:50:53 -0000

Ah, the Kwaanza cake...from the wingnut that is Sandra Lee...it's just not the holidays until the Food Network airs her Holiday Kake Kraptacular.

And yes, the Hannukah cake was completely non-kosher. However, it didn't get apple pie filling and corn nuts, so there ya go.

TC, have you seen the madness that is Sandra Lee? I think this is well worth a full post from you.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

The Bear Maiden — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:38:49 -0000

Hmm. Lately I've been struggling with the fact that I really hate Kwanzaa. My Jewish freind jokingly called me a racist. I haven't gotten around to exploring my feelings in writing, but I intend to very soon. Even though Kwanzaa is over. But my rant sort of runs into Black History month, which I also hate, so it's all good.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

jack goldman — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:32:49 -0000

It's too bad so many people are ignorant of the history of our solar celebrations, lost in history. Christmas is a winter solstice celebration. Mothers day is a spring rite. Fathers day is a summer solstice celebration. Rosh Hoshanna is a lunar Jewish New Year. It's all about our place in the Universe. Of course capitalists are trying to get in on the act from birth dates, to solar dates, to any date of all for gift giving. Let's all celebrate being born and being alive. We don't have to become crass about Jews, and Christians, and Africans, and Muslims all hating each other because each tribe wants to invade, kill, steal, lie, and dominate each other. It's about love, not war.

Can't we all just get along? This is a great time to be alive even if we are so removed from our harmony with the Universe we have forgotten, and want to forget, our heritage in the quest for who can die with the most toys. You don't find a miracle, you live one. When you get cancer or sick or have a dead loved one all you want is the miracle of normal returned.

That's what all these Jewish, and Christian, and African, and Native American, and Muslim holidays or holi-days, or holy-days are all about . Let's have a little compassion for all people in this competitive rat race world. Let's share food and share some love. We are too divisive. We all need to be meaner to machines and nicer to all people. Machines have no compassion, no love, but we humans have a unique gift of the ability to love and have compassion. Can't we all share and get along? Let's stop being racist human doings and start being compassionate human beings.

Peace, Jack Goldman, St. Paul, MN

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Yamaneko — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:37:22 -0000

"Classic. I'll admit Kwanzaa always seemed like it was trying too hard. All holiday's are "made up" so it gets a pass there, but it seemed replete with all of these traditions that really weren't traditional."

Growing up with the traditions of Polish Christmas, whose lukewarm celebration in my house would take a paragraph to list, it seemed in my ignorance that the Polish-Americans had distinctive Christmas traditions, as did our neighbors of Greek, Serbian, German and Mexican extraction while African-Americans had nothing beyond the WASPy turkey, church and presents. From my (admittedly ignorant) position, it just seemed fair that African-Americans developed their own traditions.

Of course, the other ethnic traditions developed in a milieu of near-universal poverty, occasional famine, semi-serfdom, isolation and without the American mass-market machine. That made them authentic -- probably so authentic that our kin on the other side of the Atlantic are leaving them behind as quaint.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Nina — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:20:04 -0000

I gotta pipe up here with my defense of Kwanzaa. I grew up in the Bay Area, and few were fans of Karenga, but there were a lot of Kwanzaa celebrations in my youth. I saw it more as a sincere study group, opportunity to get together with friends and spend 15 minutes talking about social issues amidst the party, drinking, eating, etc. Yes, it was a lot of Black Power folks and many non (I'm Japanese-American). I don't know why people have such strong opinions AGAINST Kwanzaa. Maintaining cultural traditions is crucial to any people. Since so many of old traditions were TAKEN from Black people during the abnormal slavery process, I respect the ideals of some to re-create culture (no matter how contrived it may feel in the beginning). What's the alternative, a cynical cultural vacuum? That sucks as a life.

There are fake and sincere practitioners of any tradition, religion, etc. Perhaps Karenga was the original fake practitioners, but since him many people have taken it up as their own. America is not enhanced by shooting down anyone's attempt to create non-materialistic culture.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Lia — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:40:13 -0000

TNC is dead on about the observation of holidays for the sake of presents - not that there's anything hellacious wrong with it, but call a spade a spade. When I was a kid in heavily Catholic PA, we got small treats for Hanukkah so we wouldn't feel left out when our friends got the earth and sky. But after age 12 or so, we were expected to suck up the fact that Hanukkah's neither a theologically significant nor traditionally gift-giving holiday. Thereafter we got bupkes. And don't get me started on Jews who "celebrate" Christmas...

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

John — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:45:28 -0000

Actually, most if not all of the entire Christian calendar is based on Celtic and other pagan religious festivals (Halloween/All Souls = Samhain).

Err...no?

The most important part of the Christian calendar - the Lent/Easter/Pentecost cycle - is pretty explicitly based on the Jewish calendar. In many European languages, the words for "Passover" and "Easter" are identical or nearly identical. (French: Pâques vs Pâque; Spanish: Pascua). Obviously some parts of the calendar, including Christmas, come out of pagan tradition, but the most important part of the Christian calendar is surely a pretty sizeable exception to the idea that the Christian calendar is mostly based on pagan observances.

Which is not to deny the pagan influence on Christian observance. But we should be clear that the Jewish influence is to a considerable degree more important.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Scott — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:26:48 -0000

Technically, Santa Claus the mythical figure is an elf, not a man and certainly not a white man. I usually understand "white" to mean caucasian here on these boards. While the European images of Santa Claus generally show a dude (elf) with pale skin, he's most definitely an elf. Calling him a white man (elf) would be zeroing in on the color of his skin alone.

We wouldn't want to do that, now, would we? Judge a guy (elf) by the color of his skin and not the content of his character (bag of presents)?

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

deva — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:15:33 -0000

While I was growing up we always celebrated Christmas and Kwanzaa. Evidently, my parents didn't feel that our family had to choose and I never experienced it as particularly strange. Kwanzaa always seemed more philosophical to me than Christmas but Christmas often seemed more full of joy (not just presents, mind you, but actual expressions of unfettered happiness and appreciation). It was nice to have them both.

As for the issue of commercialization -- name a celebration that is not commercialized in America. That's what we do here, create demand so that people will buy shit they don't need, but still desperately want. The challenge with gifting is to create/design gifts that are less about money than beauty, effort, sentimentality, nostalgia, and various other kinds of lovely ephemera. Frankly, I think the no presents hardcore is a bit uncreative and even a little mean-spirited. I understand the anti-consumerist and even revolutionary ideology behind it but like most militancy it just rubs me the wrong way.

I suppose we can rail and whine about consumerism, but ultimately it's our own choice how commercially saturated holidays in our own houses become.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Surly Duff — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:02:55 -0000

Q: Why invent an omniscient Claus to make them behave when you can beat your kids?

A: For when you're not around.

A#2: Also because a small child has difficulty understanding how an omniscient, but unpresent God can watch over his actions, which would require him to behave. But, create an omniscient AND anthropomorphic overseer, especially one who is a jolly, fat man in a slick fuzzy get-up who also controls the quality and quanitity of presents and the child will have a better ability to understand and grasp the need to behave...well, at least for the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

zacksback — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:32:19 -0000

Actually, most if not all of the entire Christian calendar is based on Celtic AND other pagan religious festivals.

Emphasis added for JonF and others who cannot scan a sentence correctly. Take out the reference to the word "Celtic" and the sentence reads: "Most...of the calendar is based on pagan religous festivals." I could have also said "Greek and other pagan festivals." Or "Jewish and pagan traditions."

(Which I'm sure some commenter would have mistakenly scanned as "Jewish and other pagan traditions" and tossed off a reply informing me that Judaism is not pagan.).

Speaking of which...the "nuance" crap. When I read T-N's remark about sex acts, I did not need him to exposit and extrapolate and explain that, by the way, he really didn't mean abuse of children or sexual assault. Of course he didn't mean that. To expect him to write an entire legalese paragraph with exceptions and carve-outs isn't to demand "nuance" -- it's saying that nuance goes right over your head. It's admitting a complete inability to recognize subtext, or infer intent.

Apologies for the rant, but I'm rather incensed. (Or something more nuanced? Perhaps galled. Vexed. Annoyed. Safer still? Displeased.).

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

shanilink — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:48:36 -0000

So many people have quotated that sex line so much that all I get out of this post is that Ta is a freak!

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

JDinBalt — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:42:37 -0000

Re: Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa cake

Not to veer the discussion off course, but it still exists, alive and well, on YouTube, and food bloggers take this time every year to poke fun at it. Only she doesn't call it a "Kwanzaa cake" per se. She calls it a most amazing "angel food harvest cake" - complete with corn nuts to fill in for the "acorns".

If I may post the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we2iWTJqo98

If I may not, just go to YouTube and search for "Kwanzaa cake" - it's the first video that pops up.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Gene — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:38:19 -0000

"Dude, there's no clean or dirty, only what you're into or what you're not."

Wow, that is spectacularly wrong. I mean really, badly, wrong, dude. I care about the Christmas wars about as much as I care about the Kwanzaa wars, but I know how terrible that is.

Dude, let's be grateful this nuanced thinking wasn't applied to defend various forms of bigoted radio satire. That would be a credibility buster.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

JonF — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:46:40 -0000

Re: Actually, most if not all of the entire Christian calendar is based on Celtic and other pagan religious festivals (Halloween/All Souls = Samhain).

Very little of the core Christian calendar is Celtic. Christianity grew up in the Mediterranean world and the core pagan influences on it were Greek and Roman. The very calendar is the Roman calendar, with months named for Rome's gods and emperors. To be sure, in the Celtic lands some Celtic influences crept in, and the same is true in Germanic, Slavic, Ethiopian and other territories. In fact, the process is ongoing: Native American and African Christianity has rather recently absorbed elements from those cultures too. (Note: old Irish Samhain was in mid-October; it was not Oct 31. Some of its customs very obviously migrated to Halloween, but not the date itself).

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Thomas R — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:48:09 -0000

My problem with Kwanzaa is the other winter holidays are, at least in theory, "holy days" for some religion. I thought at one time Kwanzaa was a holy festival of some West African people, but learning that wasn't the case kind of hurt it for me. It seems like there's bound to be some actual African wintertime festival even if much of Africa is in the tropics.

Also new things are always mocked. And in terms of holidays Kwanzaa is relatively new. Take pretty much any religion founded in the last fifty years, even if it's highly white and upper-class, and you'll see it be called a cult. (I'm not counting most schisms of established religious denominations. Whatever schisms happen among the Episcopalians, or if schisms happen in the AME church, it's unlikely any of them will be deemed cults)

Although mockery might be unfair, some hesitancy is understandable. At times people will try to create some new religion or holiday and it doesn't go anywhere. Some people are just temperamentally "wait and see" people. If it's widespread thirty years from now Kwanzaa will probably be more-or-less accepted.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

ooglevonfalkenstein — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:45:16 -0000

"Debating the holidays, is like debating sex acts. Dude, there's no clean or dirty, only what you're into or what you're not."

Pedophiles and practitioners of incest and bestiality, not to mention rapists will no doubt agree with you, but a touch more nuance might be prudent.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

KevDog — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:41:22 -0000

My problem isn't with Kwanzaa (all holidays are man's creation), but with Karenga. Saying that Christmas is the holiday of the oppressor is going over the line.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

QueenTiye — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:54:23 -0000

Dang it... sorry.

TNC: Yeah, ok, I have to cop to that. My son gets to make a list, and I do my best to get whatever's on it. I couldn't handmake a anything if my life depended on it - no time, and no talent.

But - I'm not unhappy about it being another "American" holiday either. I mean - I'm American. More specifically, I'm African-American, and that means a lot of things. I try to bring all of that to the table.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

QueenTiye — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:50:58 -0000

Last post! Seriously! (and sorry to be so adamant)

@Believe it and Rosali:

I hear you. It felt forced for me as well - especially when doing it with a whole bunch of people. Over the years, we've come to do Kwanzaa rather privately - I'm longing to have a karamu feast, but typically don't bother. Whenever I do have one - there'll be very little talking about Kwanzaa - and I'm not asking anyone to dress up.

The moment when it stopped feeling like a contrivance to me was the morning my son woke up and asked me why we hadn't decorated for Kwanzaa yet. He was a bit worried that somehow or another, Kwanzaa wouldn't be happening. He gets lots of presents for Kwanzaa, though we always make sure a good balance of those presents are books and other meaningful gifts - but when we can afford presents, we do afford them... never mind what anyone else has to say about it. My family - my tradition. And that year - he was about 7, I realized that Kwanzaa was all he'd ever known, and I got into the heart of what it meant for him.

Its never felt forced since then.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:49:31 -0000

"TNC - It may be true that "anyone" can celebrate Kwanzaa, but inasmuch as most of the holiday has to do with celebrating the historical struggle toward freedom of African Americans, it may not be everyone's cup of tea - and divorcing Kwanzaa from that aspect is offensive."

Yeah right now. But I wonder how long it will be true. As I said, holidays aren't static. Kwanzaa was originally supposed to be about hand-made gifts. But I know plenty of kids who got remote control cars for Kwanzaa. I'm not dissing--more to the point, I think it's like most other American holidays.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

Tony Comstock — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:47:05 -0000

I suppose it might also be true that anyone can celebrate Hannukah. After all, what's not to celebrate? God provided a miracle to an oppressed people - light sustained for 8 days that should have extinguished in one. But taking the holiday out of the context of the wider history of the Jewish people, and their struggle to maintain their culture would be wrong.

Sometimes a latke is just a latke.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

QueenTiye — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:43:28 -0000

TNC - It may be true that "anyone" can celebrate Kwanzaa, but inasmuch as most of the holiday has to do with celebrating the historical struggle toward freedom of African Americans, it may not be everyone's cup of tea - and divorcing Kwanzaa from that aspect is offensive.

I suppose it might also be true that anyone can celebrate Hannukah. After all, what's not to celebrate? God provided a miracle to an oppressed people - light sustained for 8 days that should have extinguished in one. But taking the holiday out of the context of the wider history of the Jewish people, and their struggle to maintain their culture would be wrong.

Re: The war on Kwanzaa

QueenTiye — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:37:43 -0000

@Scott:

Yes - I'd agree that lots of poor people could have used another kind of tradition, but a holiday born in the 60s is certainly going to reflect what was going on... and the commercialization of Christmas was only one of the stated reasons for Kwanzaa. I only addressed it in fairness to your comment - it would be unfair to go on a long spiel about all else that Kwanzaa is about, when a. you didn't ask, and b. it's absolutely true that ONE of the reasons for the holiday was to combat the perceived ill of predatory commercialization.

And the point also stands when you take into account poor Chinese kids who aren't going to take too well to the fat white santa, but remember that some of the protest against the commercialized version of Kwanzaa was the undue love for a fictional white guy, instead of a genuine appreciation for very real black arents. That experience - the perpetuation of rejection of black in favor of white - is also a part of what Kwanzaa aims to correct. And so on.

My point is - Kwanzaa is not "just" a rejection of Christmas. It isn't EVEN a rejection of Christmas - African American Christians who celebrate the birth of Jesus celebrate Kwanzaa the very next day. It is a lot more than that, and dissing the holiday just because it was born 40 years ago by a man still alive today is unfortunate, and ultimately, unfair.