Wow, the comedy gold is just gushing today! Ann Coulter wrote a Kwanzaa carol!
(Sing to “Jingle Bells”)
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
and…
Now the “holiday” concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation and public schools across the nation. Bush called Kwanzaa a holiday that promotes “unity” and “faith.” Faith in what? Liberals’ unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?
The last I checked, Christmas as she is celebrated in the U.S. is a (mere) 130-year-old Victorian construct. Its modern rituals and observances come, for the most part, from the holiday customs of Queen Victoria’s own German husband, Prince Albert (who, despite rumors to the contrary, is not in a can). Before 1875 in the U.S. colonies, only those strange German settlers brought trees inside to celebrate, and even they’re just watered-down versions of pagan Yule trees.
(The General Court of Massachusetts even enacted a law in 1659 making any observance of December 25 a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations. Damn those Massachusetts activist judges!)
Next time you want a really authentic holiday tree, hang a few victims on the lower branches of an evergreen and then strew their entrails over and around it. Trees were so sacred to the pagan Germanic tribes that someone who once stripped bark off a particularly holy specimen was flayed for it — his skin then attached over the tree’s wound like a giant Band-Aid. To prove his point during a sermon, St. Boniface chopped down a sacred oak, which has also somehow made it into the Christmas tree myth.
(You think I’m making this stuff up? Believe me, I’m not. Early Germanic pagan religious practices and their transfer to / syncretic relationship with Christanity is my academic specialty).
Let’s not even get into St. Nicholas/Santa — I point you to David Sedaris’ essay “Six To Eight Black Men” in Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim on that.
If the African-American community wishes to celebrate their winter holiday of choice in a way that you don’t think is real or authentic, Ann, look in the mirror. We’re not doing it “right” either. And neither are other religions, if you want to claim that new forms of cultural/religious observance aren’t ok. NEO blogger Jill Miller Zimon has had a really interesting series this week on how her family celebrates Chanukah, for example, and Jeff Hess wrote this post about Jewish assimilation.
Things change, Ann.
I don’t speak for African-Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa. Frankly, I don’t think I know any who do. But it’s their choice and their right to celebrate what they want, in the way they want, regardless of your opinions on the holiday’s origins. Otherwise, to avoid being hypocritical, I’ll see you at the Temple of Osiris or any other pre-Christian life/death/rebirth god born of a virgin after a flood.