34th Annual Kwanzaa Celebration

All around the world, on every continent in the world, throughout the world African community, African people, in the name and framework of Kwanzaa, will gather together to celebrate themselves.

And this year as always, they will celebrate family, community and culture.

That is to say, they will celebrate the good, beauty and sacredness of their lives, the indispensable caring, sharing and shielding foundation of family and community and the ancient, rich, varied and instructive cultural values and practices that ground Kwanzaa, define us as a people, and direct us forward on the upward paths of our ancestors.

Indeed, at the heart and center of the holiday, Kwanzaa is its concern with and stress on embracing and practicing its core values, the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles) and related communitarian African values.

Nguzo Saba are a Black value system, a set of communitarian African values which aid us in grounding ourselves righteously and rightly, directing our lives toward good and expansive ends, and toward conceiving and bringing into being the good communities, societies and world we all want and work and struggle so hard to bring into being.

Our Umoja (Unity) Opening Ceremony highlights the first and foundational principle of the Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles).

Unity is both a principle and practice of togetherness in all things good and of mutual benefit.