Kwanzaa celebrates the best and highest of the values, history, culture, philosophy, and achievements of African people (living in America and in other parts of the world). Come and join in this celebration of family, community, and culture.
All around the world, on every continent and throughout the African community, African people, in the name and framework of Kwanzaa, will gather together to celebrate themselves.
This year, as always, they will celebrate family, community and culture. That is to say, they will celebrate the good, beauty and sacredness of their lives, the indispensable caring, sharing and shielding foundation of family and community and the ancient, rich, varied and instructive cultural values and practices that
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All around the world, on every continent and throughout the African community, African people, in the name and framework of Kwanzaa, will gather together to celebrate themselves.
This year, as always, they will celebrate family, community and culture. That is to say, they will celebrate the good, beauty and sacredness of their lives, the indispensable caring, sharing and shielding foundation of family and community and the ancient, rich, varied and instructive cultural values and practices that ground Kwanzaa, define them as a people, and direct them forward on the upward paths of ancestors.
Indeed, at the heart and center of the holiday, Kwanzaa is concern with and stress on embracing and practicing core values: the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles) and related communitarian African values. Nguzo Saba are a Black value system, a set of communitarian African values which aid in grounding oneself righteously and rightly, directing lives toward good and expansive ends, and toward conceiving and bringing into being the good communities, societies and world all want and work and struggle so hard to bring into being.
The Umoja (Unity) Opening Ceremony highlights the first and foundational principle of the Nguzo Saba. Without this principle, all the other principles suffer. Unity is both a principle and practice of togetherness in all things good and of mutual benefit. It is a principled and harmonious togetherness, not simply being together. This is why value-rootedness is so important, even indispensable. Unity as principled and harmonious togetherness is a cardinal virtue in both classical and general African societies.
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