My response to those who mock Kwanzaa as a "made-up holiday"

[Hugabear]

Never fails around this time of year. You hear people (usually racist right-wing Christians) mocking Kwanzaa as a "made-up" holiday trying to capitalize on the Christmas season.

My response: Made up? You mean like how Christmas is a made-up holiday? You know, how the early Christians decided to capitalize on the "pagan" winter solstice celebrations, even co-opting many of their symbols? After all, even if Jesus did exist, he most certainly was not born on December 25th. How exactly is Kwanzaa any less "made-up" than Christmas? I guess it's okay to make up holiday when it suits your interests, eh?

[ejpoeta]

1. i agree. Every holiday is in essence 'made up'. It might be on a certain day

or to represent something like the birth or death of someone or some other thing, but it is made up.... created by someone that wanted to remember or celebrate something. Just because christmas has been around longer doesn't make it any less of a made up holiday. I get sick of people thinking THEIR belief system is the only one that matters and they can trample all over everyone else to suit themselves.

[Zhade]

3. Indeed. It's all fabricated mythology, why single one out?

NT!

[Bigmack]

4. It's all really a War on Festivus.. which is For the Rest of Us! nt

[Kennah]

5. The War on Festivus does offend me ...

... but not as much as the war on Yule. There is no greater joy and peace than the making of a Yule log.

[Tunkamerica]

17. Festivus is nothing compared to Chrimbus

[Kennah]

6. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is also made up

You can throw that one at them, and note that it was Ronny Raygun who signed it into law. It's a great way of calling someone out as a racist, without calling them a racist.

[tblue]

7. Is there a holiday that wasn't made up?

I celebrate Kwanzaa. Not every year but a lot. Enjoy it and forget them!

[starroute]

8. My mother always insisted Hanukkah was essentially made-up

When I was little, she explained to be that Hanukkah had never been anything but a minor political holiday, celebrating the Persian Empire being kicked out of Israel, and that at most it might involve spinning dreidls and giving the children pennies and candy. But after World War II, Jews who were worried that their children wanted to celebrate Christmas, because it had trees and presents and all the good stuff, inflated Hanukkah into a Christmas-equivalent and started referring to their Christmas trees as "Hanukkah bushes."

She didn't think much of that. She figured that if you wanted a Christmas tree you should just have one and not try to pretend it was something else.

I've never seen my mother's account of things anywhere else, but I have no reason to doubt her memories of the way it was (or wasn't) when she was a little girl.

I should add, by the way, that when I was maybe six or seven, some family friend gave me a large plastic dreidl that I never took much interest in because it didn't spin very well. But two or three years later, I took it out of the closet and accidentally dropped it -- and the top came off revealing a whole lot of really stale chocolate-covered raisins.

And that's what Hanukkah means to me.

[tishaLA]

14. your mother's basically right

And my mother agreed with yours.

But then, aren't Jewish mothers always right--even when they're not?

[alcibiades_mystery]

23. Your mother was correct

But even Christmas was rarely celebrated in the exuberant way it is now until after WW2.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

9. It has the shorted history and the weakest provenance

Except maybe Festivus...

[izquierdista]

12. One small correction

I believe the Gift of the Frozen Fish, in memory of the Dear Leader's passing, has the shortest history at 9 days.

[dmallind]

10. True, but there is a qualitative difference

Xmas is a syncretic mishmash of traditions built up of many cultural influences from many countries over centuries.

Kwanzaa is a syncretic mishmash made up by one guy within living memory.

Your religious comparison is very useful. The difference is an exact analog of that between Christianity and Scientology.

Neither is objectively more true or more "real" than the other, but one came about less abruptly, less individually-driven and less recently than the other.

[aikoaiko]

11. Give it a couple of hundred years and no one will be saying that.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

13. My personal observation is that it will be gone in another 20 years

While not a valid statistic, its "observation" in my experience its observance has decayed exponentially.

[Nye Bevan]

15. My kids' elementary school used to include Kwanzaa songs in the holiday concert program

But not any more. Now it's strictly Christmas and Hanukkah. I think they noticed that pretty much nobody in the school was celebrating Kwanzaa.

[The Straight Story]

16. I understand why they say 'made up'

Most people here never heard of it until some years back. The majority of people in the US, including yourself I am guessing, grew up hearing about Christmas and Hanukkah. I never heard of it when growing up, it seems to have just popped up.

[DesertRat]

18. Kwanzaa was created in 1966

By a Cal. State University professor. Time will tell if it is still a holiday in a couple of thousand years.

[REP]

19. Ask Kwanzaa-bot

[alcibiades_mystery]

22. Christmas as we know it was invented in the late 19th century

Not sure what 1000 years you're referring to.

[Kurmudgeon]

20. Easter is the important holiday anyway, enjoy your mid-winter feasting festival.

[REP]

21. ...important to whom?

It's just another holiday appropriated by a newer religion from older traditions. While it is the raison d'être for one religion, it's just another Sunday to many.

[Kurmudgeon]

33. To those who believe, whether you do or not.

[getdown]

24. one is a celebration of solar and historic events and traditions

the other is a recently developed celebration of culture and identity

the beauty part of this time is the overlapping traditions that focus on love, community, peace, sharing and the warmth of the fire or candles

food and presents!

what's not 2 love?

[Dreamer Tatum]

25. My response: "You're right. It is made-up."

Not sure why telling the truth is so offensive.

[Lionessa]

26. All holidays are made up. Most religions are made up, hence holy-days follow that tradition.

[MineralMan]

27. Well, we celebrated Pastamas this year.

Or so it seemed. Too many pasta dishes over the holidays to suit me.

[JackBeck]

28. Institutionalized racism = anything not aligned with White privilege is fake.

See: Obama, birth certificate.

True story.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

29. When something associated with a minority is being critiqued, it is not automatically racism

There are any numbe of African Americans, including myself who have to suppress guffaws when Kawza comes up.

[JackBeck]

31. A white person dismissing an entire subculture of a marginalized minority isn't a 'critique.'

It's institutionalized racism.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

32. But its not if I do it since I am African American...

Note that Kwanza is not a sub culture, and not particularly representative of African Americans.

[Bluenorthwest]

30. It is made up, also it is valid as a holiday. Fact is I am older than Kwanza and Christmas

is older than me.
Can not deny that and do not need to in order to value or celebrate the holiday. Gay Pride is a younger holiday, a few years younger, and trust me, it is real, serious and also annoying as hell to some strange meddling types.