Bring the family and join the fun for the Annual Community Kwanzaa Celebration at Weisser Park Youth Center, 802 Eckart St. This free event is open to the public and will include music, dance, poetry, a musical performance by Fatima Washington and a Kwanzaa Feast.

Kwanzaa was established by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966. Kwanzaa is an African American and Pan African holiday which celebrates family, community and culture. Its origins are in the first harvest celebrations of Africa from which it takes its name. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza” which means “first fruits” in Swahili, a Pan-African language which is the most widely spoken African language.

Kwanzaa builds on the five fundamental activities of Continental African “first fruit” celebrations: ingathering; reverence; commemoration; recommitment; and celebration. Kwanzaa then is:

• A time of ingathering of the people to reaffirm the bonds between them
• A time of special reverence for the creator and creations in thanks and respect for the blessings, bountifulness and beauty of creation
• A time for commemoration of the past in pursuit of its lessons and in honor of its models of human excellence, our ancestors
• A time of recommitment to our highest cultural ideas in our ongoing effort to always bring forth the best of African cultural thought and practice
• A time for celebration of the good, the good of life and of existence itself, the good of family, community and culture, the good of the awesome and the ordinary, in a word the good of the divine, natural and social