Kwanzaa has become a nationally recognized celebration of African culture and community in the United States since it was founded in 1966, and it is also observed in countries with large African descendant populations. The holiday runs for seven days, from the day after Christmas through New Year’s Day, and it is observed in both large, city-sponsored events and smaller communities and homes.
The tradition is designed as a nationwide communal event that reinforces self-determination and unity in the face of oppression, while also functioning as a cultural framework that many families use alongside religious festivals such as Christmas. People of any faith, race or ethnic background can participate.
Kwanzaa is built around the Nguzo Saba, a set of seven principles that are collectively observed across the week, with a different principle observed each day: Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity) and Imani (Faith). Many observances also include daily activities such as honoring ancestors and reading poetry, alongside the routine of lighting one candle each night.
The holiday’s symbolism includes a kinara candleholder with seven candles, and the candles follow the colors of the Kwanzaa flag—black representing the people, red their struggle, and green their hope. The name Kwanzaa comes from a Swahili phrase, “mutanda ya kwanza,” meaning “first fruits” or “first harvest,” and the final “a” was added to accommodate seven children present at the first celebration, with each child given a letter.
Kwanzaa also traces its origins to the Black Freedom Movement of the 1960s, with organizers presenting it as a way to reconnect Black communities in the U.S. with African cultural traditions that were severed by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Maulana Karenga, the holiday’s founder, wrote in his annual Kwanzaa address in 2023 that Kwanzaa “thus came into being, grounded itself and grew as an act of freedom, an instrument of freedom, a celebration of freedom and a practice of freedom.”
Karenga also described the holiday in the context of activism, including a characterization in an interview with PBS’s Henry Lewis Gates Jr. that Kwanzaa was a “political-motivator holiday.” In a separate interview, Janine Bell, president and artistic director at the Elegba Folklore Society in Richmond, Virginia, said the holiday centers on African and African-descended people coming together around family, community and culture “so we can be in spaces where… we feel fully African and fully human at the same time.”
In the years since its founding, Kwanzaa has grown in popularity, with a 2019 AP-NORC survey finding that 3% of the country celebrates it. The holiday has also been recognized through public statements from former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and in 1997 the U.S. Postal Service began issuing Kwanzaa stamps. Even with that broad visibility, Kwanzaa is not recognized as a federal holiday.
Family celebrations often include gift-giving and sharing foods from across the African diaspora, with meals culminating in the Karamu, a feast featuring dishes from different parts of Africa and the diaspora. In communities that observe Kwanzaa at home, corn is frequently used as a symbolic centerpiece tied to the idea that children—and the future they embody—help carry cultural survival and community development.
The holiday’s daily focus is meant to continue beyond New Year’s Day. Bell said the intention is that the principles last, adding, “The need for the principles and the strengthening value of the principles don’t go away on January 2nd.”