Kwanzaa brings years of tradition to new life

VIRGINIA BEACH

For Seko Varner, Kwanzaa always felt like something of a niche holiday. He celebrated with his family and friends every year while growing up in New York, but it was the same few people each winter, he said.

As an adult, Varner said, he's noticed a growing interest in Kwanzaa, a celebration started in the 1960s to honor African heritage. The postal service has issued two Kwanzaa stamps, for example. This year, he helped organize the first Kwanzaa at Christian Church Uniting in Virginia Beach.

"It's good when other people are interested and asking, 'What can we do to put this on?' " he said. "It's a demonstration of growth that I didn't foresee and that I'm kind of pleased about."

About five dozen people attended the church's Kwanzaa festival Sunday, where they listened to drum music and traditional African stories, watched dances, and listened to a reading of Kwanzaa's seven principles - one for each day of the celebration - which include unity, faith and self-determination. On Sunday, the principle of the day was "ujima," which means "collective work and responsibility" in Swahili.

By celebrating the African ancestry of black people, Kwanzaa gives a broad view of their history, including the parts before slavery, said Ruth Varner, Seko Varner's mother.

"I grew up in Atlanta, and... everything that was black was, in a way, considered not good," she said. "This is about identity, this is about lifting up that identity."

Varner, a storyteller, planned to tell the children on Sunday a story about a goat who's told many times by his donkey friend to stay away from the leopard, but doesn't listen, and gets closer and closer. She ends the story by waving her arms and shouting. Was the goat eaten by the leopard? The children never find out for sure, but the moral is clear: If people tell you something is dangerous, don't go finding out for yourself. And the story is a tribute to another African tradition: oral storytelling with a lesson.

Growing up with Kwanzaa every year formed a connection to Africa that led him to think bigger, said Seko Varner, whose first name means "one who fights with his eyes" in Yoruba, a West African language. During the 1960s, when Kwanzaa was first celebrated, "black people didn't see themselves as being important, moving toward importance, or coming from importance," he said.

"People of African descent were, in a way, ashamed of that African connection for a long time," he said. "In celebrating Kwanzaa, you start appreciating some of those traditions."

Alicia Wittmeyer, (757) 222-5216, alicia.wittmeyer@pilotonline.com