I never gave much thought to Kwanzaa before.  Some kind of African cultural holiday, right?  I'm not African, so I shouldn't bother with it.  Yesterday Kwanzaa was mentioned by my family and chuckled at -- apparently it's a made-up holiday.  I hadn't heard that before.

So I did some quick Internet searches to see what's up.  Unexpectedly, I found something quite disturbing.  Here's a link to Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa   Of note, familiarize yourself with the Seven Principles (Nguzo Saba).  Make sure your Christian goggles are on first, otherwise you probably won't notice anything amiss:

• Umoja (Unity) To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
• Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
• Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems and to solve them together.
• Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
• Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
• Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
• Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

These principles, although they sound like good things, are not very Christian.  They're rather Humanistic.  A little disturbed by this, I did some more searches and found this website created by a person who personally talked with the creator of Kwanzaa.  It discusses Kwanzaa from a Biblical point of view:  http://www.christocentric.com/Kwanzaa/ 

If you know any Christians who observe Kwanzaa, maybe you can challenge them to inspect it from God's point of view.  For the friend you know who practices Kwanzaa, it might be helpful to remind them that the Bible espouses only one "race," the human race.  We all come from one blood, of Adam, and later of Noah.  Christianity/Christmas is not a "white man's" religion/holiday.

It also might be worth noting that Kwanzaa can be spoken of and practiced freely in public schools, but Christmas is being excluded.

Kwanzaa is observed from the 26th to 1st, so this email is relevant for the next week.  Some proponents of Kwanzaa want to make it a year-long thing, though.  Keep it in mind in your daily interactions with others around you.

And finally an emphasis:  I was so wrong, Kwanzaa isn't a benign cultural holiday but a whole moral system and way of life that runs counter to God on many fronts.  To those who are as I was, I say:  wake up!