Where's All the Kwanzaa crap?!?
by Jaki Grier

I wrote an article where I mentioned the word Kwanzaa twice. Both times it was edited out. As a writer and a Black person, anytime anything cultural is purposely removed from my writing I take it as a ploy of the white man trying to hold me down. After numerous attempts to find the reasoning for those edits I can now safely say I have reason to believe that the ghost of George Washington and Christmas as an entity is in the center on a plot to stop me from celebrating Kwanzaa.

What are you rambling about, Jaki? What does George and Christmas have to do with anything? Walk with me a moment. Christmas or Santa is jealous of the new kid. It's like, "If all the Black people start playing with Kwanzaa, what am I gonna do with all these Black Barbies and action figures I got lined up at K.B. Toys?" So Santa goes to George and they chat, old white man to old white man. Washington offers to help Jolly Ol' Fat Christmas hold down puny little Kwanzaa and in exchange Santa can pull some strings with the Tooth Fairy so George can get some shiny new choppers. Not buying it? Well how about this… I have the WORST LUCK in the WHOLE WORLD and it figures that the ONLY holiday I celebrate is the one that you cannot find the middle of Corn City, Nowheresville!

As Halloween and Thanksgiving pass, Christmas throws up all over the United States spewing Happy Holidays greetings from every store, house and drunken mall Santa. Yum. Hanukah gets some good airtime too. Every store is scared of being caught by that one Jewish customer who could as, "Which aisle had the menorahs?" So stock piles of them are in the backroom just in case. I've even seen decorations for other winter holidays that I know so little about I just label it all under Wicca because dividing it up hurts my head. That's all well and good but what about me? In order to celebrate traditional Kwanzaa I need a few items: a Kinara, (the candle holder), Nguzo Saba Poster (Poster of The Seven Principles), Mkeka (The Mat), Mishumaa Saba (The Seven Candles), and Bendera (The African Flag). Each object has a significant meaning and so in order to have the desired effect I need all the objects. Seems easy enough right? Eager beaver that I am, I start my search for Kwanzaa supplies in Mid July. Kmart, Wal-Mart, Kohl's, Rite Aid, Roses, Target and every other store I happened to walk into is the same.

First I get a confused look. The look that says, "This isn't in the manual! What do I do?" Next the shopkeeper digs into their politically correct bag and tries to distract me with other nice ethnic objects. One told me, "We have really nice African print fabrics!" (Note: It is not an African print fabric if the tag says, "Made in Utah.") Then occasionally I get the final twist of the knife, "So is Kwanzaa like a Black Christmas? Cause I hear you people think Jesus was Black." I could comment on that by itself but so… many…jokes… not…enough time!

AAAAAAAH! My search continued until a few weeks ago, in the middle of the Dollar Tree, I knelt to the floor screaming, "Where's all the Kwanzaa crap!?" Where is all the Kwanzaa crap, indeed. It seems George and Xmas are having a good yuck yuck as I have hysterics in the middle of the dollar store.

But I will press on. Being as thrifty as always, I'll have to make do with a broken menorah, a headscarf and a printed Internet flag. However as I celebrate my makeshift holiday I will make sure this doesn't happen next year. I'm a consumer. I'm an American. I'm an African-American. And I'm more than a little annoyed. I will demand Kwanzaa crap in every store in the numerous letters I'll send off to department store CEOs. George better watch out. The Kwanzaa Crusade has begun.

Maybe if people have to understand what Kwanzaa is I wouldn't get openmouthed stares. I try to educate others but they get the same glazed over look as those oh-so-friendly shopkeepers. It's not that hard to grasp. Fairly new, the holiday is a weeklong celebration (December 26th - January 1st) that started in 1966 by M. Ron Karenga in order for descendents of slaves to reaffirm their commitment to their families, communities and the struggle for equality. Rest assured fellow Washingtonians, Kwanzaa is not a mass revolution of African-Americans rising to arms to take bloody revenge on White America. That's not until Easter. Kwanzaa is about celebrating what is it to be a Black American today. No one bats an eye on St. Patrick's Day when everyone is proud to be Irish. On the 4th of July, I'm expected to be proud to be an American. Kwanzaa is the day set aside when African descendents can look at their various shades, see the beauty our pigment and where history has left with us.

So as for Christmas, Hanukah and all those other winter happy gift making fests, I'm not hating on Big Business but there is a market out there that is being untapped. Kenny the Kwanzaa Kangaroo could hop around in a dashiki. There could be Kwanzaa parades and parties. Plus it's just a really cool word. KWANZAA! All the possibilities make me feel faint. I wouldn't have to work this hard if I just allowed myself to fall back into the Christmas hole where gifts have replaced any form of emotions. However I feel like I'm the only one that loves little lost Kwanzaa and I'll be loyal to it. And this Kwanzaa will roll by and I'll pull my hair out and continue my search for any type of ethnicity in Chestertown. God bless America.

I would also like to point out that I said Kwanzaa 20 times in this article and that 18 more times then I was allowed to in The Collegian. So... ahem... Kwanzaa, Kwanzaa, Kwanzaa!