Pick up Kwanzaa Grab N Go Bags at Southside Branch Library
Christmas Day may be over, but Southside Branch Library has free Grab N Go bags for patrons celebrating Kwanzaa!
DROP BY THE SOUTHSIDE BRANCH TO PICK UP A GRAB N' GO BAG FOR KWANZAA!!This Grab N' Go features a simple KWANZAA MEMORY GAME! This simple game involves matching cards as well as creating a chat about the meaning of the symbols and principles of Kwanzaa.
Pick it up at Southside Branch Library, 1814 11th Avenue South, through this Friday, December 29, between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Beginning annually on December 26, the day after Christmas, Kwanzaa is a seven-day period of learning, family and celebration of African culture. During Kwanzaa, families and communities come together to share a feast, to honor the ancestors, affirm the bonds between them, and to celebrate African and African American culture.
Each of the 7 days, Kwanzaa participants light a candle to highlight the principle of that day and to breathe meaning into the principles with various activities, such as reciting the sayings or writings of great black thinkers and writers, reciting original poetry, African drumming, and sharing a meal of African diaspora-inspired foods.
The table is decorated with the essential symbols of Kwanzaa:
* the Kinara (Candle Holder)
* Mkeka (Mat)
* Muhindi (corn to represent the children)
* Mazao (fruit to represent the harvest)
* Zawadi (gifts).
Kwanzza is also associated with the colors of the Pan-African flag: red (the struggle), black (the people), and green (the future), represented throughout the space and in the clothing worn by participants. These colors were first proclaimed to be the colors for all people of the African diaspora by Marcus Garvey.
Below are the 7 principles of Kwanzaa
Day 1 - Umoja (Unity), Wednesday, December 26
Meaning: To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
Day 2 - Kujichagulia (Self-determination) Thursday, December 28
Meaning: To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
Light the second candle as a reminder of the importance fo self-determination and standing up for yourself.
Day 3 - Ujima (Collective work and responsibility) Friday, December 29
Meaning: To build and maintain our community together and make our community’s problems our problems and to solve them together.
The third day of Kwanzaa, Ujima, is about collective work and responsibility. Ujima symbolizes the African proverb that "It takes a village to raise a child." Take pride in and respect the African-American community.
Day 4 - Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) - Saturday, December 30
Meaning: To build and maintain African or African-American owned stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
Day 5 - Nia (Purpose) Sunday, December 31
Meaning: To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
What is your Nia, or your purpose in life? That’s what you may be asking yourself on Kwanzaa’s fifth day.
Day 6 - Kuumba (Creativity) Monday, January 1, 2024
Meaning: To do always as much as we can to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Reflect on your creative side for Kwanzaa’s sixth day.
Day 7 - Imani (Faith), Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Meaning: To believe with all our hearts in our people and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
In a country that remains divided politically as the nation recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us need more Imani, or faith, the final principle of Kwanzaa.
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By Roy Williams, Public Relations Director | Birmingham Public Library and Gelenda Norman, Library Assistant III | Southside Branch Library
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