More Days of Kwanzaa, please!

My favorite conversation of the Holiday period was with a good friend who happens to be a Fox News viewer (please note how I resist the urge to use the term FOXTARD). "I have a friend who spends a lot of time in Africa," he said, "and my friend says that nobody over there has even heard of Kwanzaa!" He sat back, sipped his beer, and basked in his moral superiority as a lizard basks in sun.

Which is like, well, duh, it's not an African event, it's an African-American event, originated in 1966 by an American. And I could have said so, but I didn't want to burst my friend's SmugBubble.

No, just kidding. I burst his SmugBubble.

But this got me thinking... what do I know about Kwanzaa aside from that? Mostly what I learned from Futurama -- it involves a robot, I was led to believe, who distributes a book to children every year.

Turns out that this isn't quite correct.

And now I'm a Kwanzaa fan. Primary research of course was on Wikipedia, but the info is widely available: Kwanzaa was invented by Maulana Karenga because he felt that the Holiday calendar was too Euro-centric and needed something specifically for the African-American community.  And I think he did a great job! Each day of the seven has its own theme, highlighting individual accomplishment and enrichment as well as community growth and support. Compare the Twelve Days of Christmas, which are exclusively about swag, most of which is either hard work from underpaid servants, or birds.  How can an octet of farm laborers getting carpel-tunnel compare to Kuumba, the celebration of Creativity? And I'll trade you your calling birds for Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) any day. I could do with fewer Days of Christmas and more of Kwanzaa. We'll keep the gold rings of course.

Yeah, I know, I'm white, not slightly white but burn-from-moonlight white, and Kwanzaa isn't "mine." But I can admire it, and look forward to a day in the future when all Americans can enjoy this holiday just as we can all enjoy St. Patrick's day (and I'm not too happy that my people's ethnic holiday is all about throwing up, but here we are). So, take that, Geor-- oh, heck, I wasn't going to use the Foxtard's name.

Or the term Foxtard. Sorry.