- BitsBlog - https://bitsblog.com -

Is Kwanzaa Dead?

kwanzaa [1]Michael C. Moynihan, Reason Online [2],  suggests that Kwanzaa [3] is virtually dead:

In the days leading up the Christmas, one couldn’t help but notice that references to Kwanzaa, the decades-old African-American holiday that captured so many dull minds during the Great Culture Wars of the 1990s, were almost nonexistent. Kwanzaa, an Afrocentric celebration of black self-reliance (or something) that so spooked the “war on Christmas” types, has largely disappeared. Back in the day, its champions and critics alike thought it could potentially replace Christmas in the very Christian African-American community.

If Moynihan is correct, will anybody, outside the media, miss it, and will the meiia ever let go of their cherished myth of Kwanzaa?      I say no to both.

James Joyner, Outside the Beltway [4]:

Or, perhaps, it was just a fad and, like pet rocks, mood rings, and disco, the novelty wore off.

A fad, or just an artificial holiday without much, if any, reason?     Christmas might be diverse in the many different origins of its traditions, but nothing in Christmas excludes black Christians from celebrating.    I mean it wasn’t like Baby Jesus was born as the savior for only those of the palor of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.

I suggest that the meanings of Christmas are so many and so varied that anybody ought to able to find their own personal meaning in Christmas.    This is not to suggest that Linus [5] was somehow wrong, but only that he did not find the one, only and exclusive meaning of the holiday.

In the mean time, you truly put off by the religious aspects of Christmas, there is always Festivus [6].  To one and all a happy Boxing Day [7]Eve.