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African Americans honor heritage with 7-day Kwanzaa celebration
Starting today, Bay Area residents will celebrate Kwanzaa, a secular seven-day festival honoring African American heritage — with candle-lighting, the pouring of libations and other rituals.
Local celebrations of the holiday, created in the United States in 1965, include jazz, drumming, singing and more to exemplify its seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective work, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
For weeks, students have been weaving colorful mats, drawing candleholders and creating other artwork featuring Kwanzaa symbols at Ile Omode, an elementary school housed at Wo’Se Community Church of the African Way in Oakland.
Classes there begin every day with students pouring water to honor their ancestors and community leaders — just as they will do during Kwanzaa, the school’s main holiday.
“We look forward to it all year,” said Jahi Awakoaiye, director of the school, which has 60 students through the sixth grade. “It’s a time for community and family.”
Awakoaiye, an Oakland native, has fond memories of Christmas as a child, but he does not want to pass on the “myth” to his three children.
“I cannot see my children running to the mall to get in line to ask Santa Claus for gifts,” Awakoaiye said, because he’s the one working to provide them. “I don’t understand chopping down a tree, dragging it to a house, and it dies.”
Like Awakoaiye, others who are turned off by the commercialization of Christmas say they find rejuvenation in Kwanzaa, or “First Fruits of the Harvest” in Swahili. Born out of the civil rights movement, the holiday aims to help African Americans reconnect with their roots. Gifts given to children at Kwanzaa are supposed to have an educational focus.
“This is an African American holiday, developed on behalf of other African Americans,” said Adrian Williams, founder of the Village Project, a youth services organization in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood. She’s helping plan a slate of Kwanzaa activities in San Francisco, including arts performances, speeches and a walking tour of the Fillmore district. She celebrates Christmas and wants to make Kwanzaa equal in importance in society.
“It gives self-esteem and self-confidence,” Williams said.
The First Congregational Church of Oakland will have Kwanzaa readings, candle-lighting, music and a lunch of African and African American dishes on Sunday.
The church, whose congregation is about one-third African American, also celebrates Asian lunar New Year.
Event organizer Erica Britton, 37, of Oakland began celebrating Kwanzaa about six years ago.
“The principles resonated with what I believe,” she said. “It’s an African American cultural holiday — not a hero day like Martin Luther King Day — but a celebration of culture.”
Raised Christian, Britton, a psychologist, didn’t attend church for several years after she came out as a lesbian. But now she’s able to balance all aspects of her life; that’s why Kwanzaa’s principle of self-determination is so important to her.
“I reclaimed my religious heritage. I won’t allow anyone to define me in any way again,” she said.
Kristi Black, 30, a program manager at the African American Arts and Culture Complex in San Francisco, began observing Kwanzaa a decade ago, after friends introduced her to the concept. The center is hosting two nights of celebration this year.
“More people are learning about it — and not feeling intimidated by it,” Black said. “At one time, people thought you had to denounce your Christianity to celebrate it, but now more understand this is reinforcement of our African-ness.”
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