New in PJ Media:
The Biden-Harris regime sent out nearly identical greetings in succession: at 9 a.m. on Christmas Day, there was “Merry Christmas from the Biden-Harris Administration!” Exactly three hours later, we got “The Biden-Harris Administration wishes you and your loved ones a Happy Hanukkah!” Then at 10 a.m. on Dec. 26, there came “Happy Kwanzaa from the Biden-Harris Administration!” Accompanying each were cheesy but serviceable clip-art illustrations. Presidential administrations have sent out these kinds of pro-forma greetings for many years; nevertheless, the insidious nature of what the Biden-Harris regime was doing here should not be overlooked.
It’s perfectly reasonable for this White House or any other administration to send out Christmas and Hanukkah greetings, but Kwanzaa? Besides Kamala Harris, who celebrates Kwanzaa, anyway? There were recent celebrations in Brooklyn and Staten Island, as well as in Minneapolis, South Bend, Indiana, and a few other places, but these are all the more noteworthy for being unusual. Despite herculean establishment media efforts, Kwanzaa still hasn’t become part of the American mainstream holiday tradition.
The New York Times tacitly admitted this failure on Friday, when it ran a doggedly upbeat but quixotic piece entitled “Yes, Kwanzaa Is Made Up. That’s Why It’s Great.” The subhead elaborated on the Paper of Record’s desperation: “There’s something uniquely American in both its wanton borrowing from existing tradition and its naked admission of artificiality.” Yeah, sure, that’s it.
The author of the Times article, Ismail Muhammad, recalls ruefully: “When I told other kids that my family celebrated Kwanzaa, I was met with slack-jawed incomprehension or, worse, gimlet-eyed ridicule, before being asked the inevitable question: Isn’t that a made-up holiday? And when I went away to college in New York, I found that Kwanzaa was something of a joke among my classmates.” It’s easy to feel for him, but it was his parents who put him in that position by insisting on celebrating a holiday fashioned out of whole cloth in 1966 by a man who was convicted of torturing two women.
Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris regime’s calculation here is obvious: it sends out Christmas greetings to court the vote of Christians, including the cultural Christians who make up a considerable portion of the American electorate. It sends out Hanukkah greetings to try to take the sting out of its craven betrayal of Israel, and to keep leftist Jews pulling the lever for Democrat candidates. And it sends out Kwanzaa greetings in order to affirm its support for the black American community, and to try to keep too many black voters from realizing how the Democrats have used and betrayed them over the years.
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࿗Infidel࿘ says
Happy Kwanzaa to everybody here who celebrates it 😈
Joyce says
Only the ignorant celebrate Kwanza – a celebration that was fabricated by a Marxist to draw blacks from Christmas.
Luchtpint says
Happy Rwandan Genocide and Happy Darfur Genocide to the Democrats from me, too.
That’ll teach them !
somehistory says
There is a Bible verse which proclaims, “This is the day Jehovah has made. We will rejoice and be joyful in it.”
Those of us who are actually aware, can be really ‘joyful’ that we are.
Hoi Polloi says
As usual, in order to push their ideology, leftists must condemn; we’re all both “wanton” and “artificial.” After decades of pushing the cult of self esteem, one wonders how leftists have come to develop and rely on so many with such low self esteem that they simultaneously lap up and dish out the constant criticism.
somehistory says
I sometimes wonder about their level of intelligence….they all just seem so incredibly stupid and lacking in common sense. It’s as if some great vacuum sucks up their brains and replaces them with yellow #5 Jello.
world@70 says
Have a Happy and Merry Festivus.
Rarely says
What about “Festivus for the rest of us”? How could they forget that?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Yeah, they should have remembered it. Rand Paul has made it an annual event w/ his list of wasteful government spending, which will hopefully be addressed by DOGE, once Elon and Vivek stop getting sidetracked by the H1B visa issue, which is not a part of their mandate
gravenimage says
The Biden-Harris Regime Has a Reason for Wishing People ‘Happy Kwanzaa,’ and It’s Insidious
Despite herculean establishment media efforts, Kwanzaa still hasn’t become part of the American mainstream holiday tradition.
…………………………………………………………
Personal anecdote–back in the 1990s I taught adult literacy through the library’s program here in Oakland. I eventually won a city-wide award in 1995 for my work.
Among my most popular lessons–besides the lessons provided by the main program–were ones I designed myself around holidays–Valentine’s Day, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year. The program’s director suggested that I do a lesson for Kwanzaa. I had heard of Kwanzaa, but had little interest in it–still, I dutifully read up on it, and put a lesson together.
About half of my students were African-American–and this is Oakland, which has a large Black population. But not a single student in my class had so much as heard of Kwanzaa, let alone celebrated it. I was rather surprised, but soldiered on. Finally, everyone seemed so bored that I switced to a New Year’s word finder puzzle that I’d written (word finders were a big hit, generally).
Even here, pretty much no one cared about Kwanzaa. The program director was White, and like myself probably just assumed that Kwanzaa would be a topic of interest. It was not. Now–30 years later–I very much doubt that it has much changed.
The principles of Kwanzaa are mostly warmed-over socialism given a gloss of faux pan-Africanism. No wonder my students were so bored.
Mike says
I’m not against the idea of Kwanzaa per se. It seems like a flexible way to celebrate African and African diaspora cultures. People can make of it what they want.
I’m not Black, but I’m interested in the great Black historical figures, and the tragedies of slavery, Jim Crow and atrocities such as the Greenwood Race Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the U.S.
JustJim says
Check out the genocide in Biafra in the 1960s. Nigeria civil war casualties. Colonel Ojukwu. You may find it under any of those three headings. Chad has had an ongoing civil war going on since at least the 70s. Nigerian Muslims are doing their genocide thing to Christians, as I write this. No shortage or subject matter here.
gravenimage says
Mike–with respect–Kwanzaa really has little to do with Africa or African culture. Maulana Karenga–Ron Everett–was into the Black Power movement, and his group was involved with violent clashes with the Black Panthers (this despite being on a student “non-violence committee”). He was eventually convicted of felony assault, torture, and false imprisonment of women.
He designed Kwanzaa as something African Americans could celbrate instead of Christmas (he also said that Jesus was “insane” and White). He later soft-pedaled this, but this was the original intent of Kwanzaa.
While Kwanzaa is supposed to be based on various African harvest festivals, it is–as I noted–more Marxist than anything else. If people want to celebrate it, fine–but we have every right to point out what is is and where it came from.
I agree with you about great Black historical figures–I especially find Frederik Douglas comaplling. I just don’t consider Maulana Karenga to be in this category.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Like Mike above, I have no issues about anyone observing Kwanzaa, regardless of whether or not that holiday is invented. I have read Ann Coulter & others point out how it was invented by various deep state organizations back in the day, and had no precedence otherwise. It would be fascinating to find out how many Africans in Africa had ever heard of Kwanzaa
The socialism lessons there are regrettable: as Rush Limbaugh pointed out, the true story of Thanksgiving was precisely the opposite. Of how the settlers were doing pretty badly when everybody had a common pool, but that when the land was divvied up b/w them and they were told that whatever they grew on their land was theirs, their fortunes turned around. That’s the sort of lessons Blacks, and everyone else, ought to be imbibing