Kwanzaa table
MID-HUDSON – The annual holiday of Kwanzaa began the day after Christmas and is being celebrated across the Hudson Valley, just as it is worldwide, through January 1, 2016.
The seven day holiday is comprised of seven principles with each day dedicated to one of them.
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.
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 hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
Kwanzaa was first celebrated by Maulana Karenga in 1966-67. Happy Kwanzaa to everyone in the Hudson Valley.
