{"id":1051,"date":"2012-01-06T11:32:25","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T15:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/?p=914"},"modified":"2015-06-11T05:58:39","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T09:58:39","slug":"winter-festivals-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/winter-festivals-around-the-world","title":{"rendered":"Winter Festivals Around the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Snow<\/a>
\nBrrr\u2026 Winter can get mighty cold in some places. And if that makes you think about hunkering down, historically, it\u2019s been the perfect time for a party! As early as 9000 B.C. people have celebrated the year\u2019s harvest with fingers (tightly) crossed that it\u2019d be enough to keep the community fed through barren January to April. And since 46 B.C., since Julius Caesar put the shortest day of the year\u2014winter solstice\u2014on the calendar, winter festivities have wrapped in the passing of the old and the rebirth of the new. Of course, some celebrations live beyond those days of yore. Let\u2019s take a brisk tour of three very different winter festivals around the world in this three-part winterval <\/em>series on Kwanzaa, Three Kings Day and Fastnacht.<\/p>\n

Kwanzaa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our first stop is in the United States<\/a><\/span> for Kwanzaa, a festival held annually between December 26 and January 1 to commemorate African American heritage. It\u2019s based on an old African harvest tradition. And, in fact, the word Kwanzaa itself is Swahili meaning \u201cfirst fruits.\u201d But the Kwanzaa that we know today is a relatively new celebration, created by a Californian<\/a><\/span> Black Studies professor named Maulana Karenga in 1966. It was designed to include seven key principles\u2014self-determination, unity, creativity, purpose, cooperative economics, faith and collective responsibility\u2014that are central to African American family values and culture. On each day of Kwanzaa, the family gathers together to talk about one of these seven principles. And traditionally, the youngest person at the festival will light one of seven candles on the kinara (a candle holder) while the discussion takes place. By day seven, all seven candles will be burning brightly. And families mix in lots of other objects into the week-long celebration. Some of these include a mat called a mkeka which is placed underneath the kinara, two ears of corn called muhindi to represent community, a communal cup that symbolizes unity and a flag in the red, green and black colors of Africa. The festival peaks on December 31st<\/sup> when revelers enjoy an authentic African or African-American feast called Karamu. This might be black-eyed peas and collard greens (representing good luck and money in the coming year) or traditional gumbo\u2014a blend of West African, Spanish<\/a><\/span> and French<\/a><\/span> style cooking that was first served in Louisiana<\/a><\/span> in the 18th<\/sup> century. With over 18 million people said to celebrate Kwanzaa in the 21st<\/sup> century, that\u2019s a whole lot of Kwanzaa family fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brrr\u2026 Winter can get mighty cold in some places. And if that makes you think about hunkering down, historically, it\u2019s been the perfect time for a party! As early as 9000 B.C. people have celebrated the year\u2019s harvest with fingers (tightly) crossed that it\u2019d be enough to keep the community fed through barren January to Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,63,172],"tags":[58,210,211,212],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parents","category-students","category-teachers","tag-educational-travel","tag-festivals","tag-kwazaa","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5713,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/5713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}