The Czar may be an iconoclast and rainer of parades, but a jerk he is often not. The Czar is not at all opposed to Kwanzaa, which ended a day or two ago, but would suggest that its year is not only over, but its day is done. It served or serves little purpose, and thinks it is high time to move on.

This does not mean that the small handful of people who celebrate it, or light candles, should give it up. If it is truly a tradition in your family, please do keep celebrating it. Goodness knows, we need all the traditions we can get, these days.

But you should no longer feel pressured to.

Kwanzaa is a patently manufactured celebration, intended to promote the now remotely quaint concept of African nationalism. In a post-racial, multicultural world of the late 1990s, it was rammed down America’s throats as the black Christmas.

That, it is not. Kwanzaa is non-religious, and it isn’t even a holiday—it is simply a carryover of a time that seems a bit foolish in retrospect; like Sweetest Day, it is a construct solely intended to make other people money. You can deplore the ongoing commercialization of Christmas; Kwanzaa started at commercialization.

First put together sometime in the late 1960s, when it was hip for blacks to cast off their “slave names,” Kwanzaa was an interesting if misguided attempt to give blacks an alternative to the White Man’s Christmas. After all, in the Age of African Nationalism, it must be uncomfortable for black Americans to, you know, celebrate Christmas; indeed, the first few Kwanzaa celebrations repudiated Christianity openly. The reality is that Africans have no traditional holiday around Christmas, just as “Europe” has no holiday for Juneteenth. Something needs to be made up to fill that void.

One of the biggest problems of Kwanzaa is that it is utterly synthetic—it is just as phony a celebration as you can imagine. KiSwahili names were given to seven non-universal attributes of African Nationalism, despite the fact that kiSwahili is a language used by a minority of actual Africans, and the seven attributes are not recognized by all cultures.

You have to remember that Africa is an incredibly diverse place, with thousands of languages, totally oppositional cultures, and no commonalities beside continent. The largest language spoken in Africa then, as now, is Arabic. But Arabic is associated with another religion, so a different tongue had to be selected. KiSwahili was chosen because, in the 1960s, Kenya was among the very first countries to become independent; the Kenyan national language was seen among American blacks as the language of independence.

So you have a language a single-digit percentage speak being used to describe attributes few appreciate (unity, independence, collectivism, economic exclusion, purpose, creativity, and non-religious faith), with a lot of pro-African PR. It was unheard of until a marketing blitz happened in the late 1990s, when its founder agreed to strip out the anti-Christian and anti-whitey themes.

Then, of course, the multicultural craze ate it up. It was One More Thing We Can Make School Children Celebrate; additionally, a lot of black churches and community organizations shamelessly promoted it and guilted folks into celebrating it.

Once the novelty wore off around 2000, it remained popular only among urban, upper class, college-educated black families with kids but no religious affiliation—the people most likely to have nostalgia for the Black Nationalist movement of the 1960s. As the whole nationalist cause has faded away, so too has Kwanzaa.

Of course, a common but unanswered question remains: how many people in the US actually celebrate Kwanzaa?

The answer is quite interesting. No one will admit it. The only people who discuss the numbers of celebrants are people with a vested interest in promoting it, or sloppily researched cultural or sociological websites that parrot the impossibly high numbers of the promoters. Claims that 30 million people celebrate it in the United States, for example, is insane, because there are only 42 million blacks in the country. 5 out of 7 blacks do not celebrate Kwanzaa.

Some less gullible sources claim 2% of blacks celebrate Kwanzaa, but these date back to polls from when Kwanzaa was at its PR height. Nearly all sources refuse to answer the question, and instead list the history and traditions of the celebration. Nobody wants to admit the truth about the numbers.

The Czar will shock you with the first of his two conclusions. First: less than 50,000 people celebrate Kwanzaa in the United States. The Czar reaches this conclusion based on the number of households which currently fit the Kwanzaa profile: upper middle class, post-college, non-Christian urban-area blacks. Prove us wrong.

Ready for the more shocking second conclusion? Given there are perhaps 50,000 black Jews in America, more US blacks celebrate Hanukkah than celebrate Kwanzaa. There’s a lot of candle-lighting going on, but the candles are the same color.

Here at the Gormogons, we say you should celebrate whatever holiday you want if you want. Not because some retailer or newspaper or politician or pastor is making you.

Look, if your family likes Kwanzaa and really gets into it, then more power to you. But if you’re getting tired of buying seven days of gifts for the kids when you already have Christmas gifts to purchase on top of Kwanzaa, you might consider pulling the plug on it next year. 99.9% of Black Americans already have.

Note: Our Dear Volgi recommends you read up on the background of Kwanzaa’s founder. Warning: graphic.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.