"Happy Kwanzaa Celebration"_ Dec 26-Jan.1

Kwanzaa is a week-long celebration held in the United States honoring universal African-American heritage and culture each year.It features activities such as lighting a candle holder with seven candles and culminates in a feast and gift-giving. It was created by Maulana Karenga and was first celebrated in 1966–67. The first U.S. postage stamp commemorating Kwanzaa, issued in 1997.

The name Kwanzaa derives from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, meaning first fruits of the harvest.In 2009,Maya Angelou narrated the award-winning documentary "The Black Candle",the first film about Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa celebrates what its founder called the seven principles of Kwanzaa, or Nguzo Saba (originally Nguzu Saba—the seven principles of African Heritage).Each of the seven days of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the following principles, as follows:

• Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
• Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves stand up.
• Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and to solve them together.
• Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics):To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
• Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
• Kuumba (Creativity): 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 (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Kwanzaa symbols include a decorative mat on which other symbols are placed, corn and other crops, a candle holder with seven candles, called a Kinara, a communal cup for pouring libations, gifts, a poster of the seven principles, and a black, red, and green flag. The symbols were designed to convey the seven principles.

Official website: http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/index.shtml 

This "Celebration" ties in nicely with my "African Safari Christmas Party 2011". A celebration of Heritage,Unity and Culture.

                                      "Heri za Kwanzaa"