Kampaign for Kwanzaa

Time to dust off those dashikis, sew up that kente cloth, knit those tams, clean up those shaded thick-rim glasses, and pop in that Coming to America VHS.  Why?  Because Kwanzaa is less than a month away.

After doing complete and thorough research on the holiday using the world's most trusted information source - Wikipedia (next to Fox News and a parrow on Broad Street) - I've decided that Kwanzaa isn't just something that African-Americans should celebrate, but what everyone should.

Here's the breakdown of the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa:

• 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 up and stand up for ourselves.
• 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 (family): The belief in family and general communal understanding.
• 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.

Just like any religion or holiday, I'm not saying to follow Kwanzaa by the book, nor do I believe it should be considered a separate "Black" or African-American event.  I really think if we followed the seven principles (or at least recognized them) over the Christmas season, and applied them to our own personal beliefs, it could go a long way.

Think about it: how many Christians recognize their Christianity by going to Church one night a year and then in that same night lie to their children that a pagan hobo broke in their house and gave them coal cause they were bad?

And for the record for those bad breed children out there, the way the world is going, coal ain't such a bad thing to get from Mr. Santa.