Baltimore Residents Celebrate Kwanzaa

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Between Christmas and New Year's, thousands of people around the country and here in Maryland celebrate an African American-inspired holiday. The seven principles of Kwanzaa offer a way to review the old year and look forward to the next.

Gigi Barnett visited one Kwanzaa celebration in Baltimore.

Day two of the Kwanzaa celebration at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore starts with a drumbeat and a call to remember ancestors.

"We light candles and we sing songs and we feast and we talk about the principle of the day," said Kibibi Ajanku, Sankofa Dance Theater. "But we do it with joy."

Marie Dorsey has been celebrating Kwanzaa since the late 1970s. She noticed too much commercialism during the holidays.

"I dropped that like a hot potato," she said.

It was her children who inspired her to adopt the seven day non-religious holiday.

"How can I buy three or four hundred dollars' worth of toys? And they broke the toys the next day. They didn't show that they really were appreciative. It was like, `I want! I want! I want!'" Dorsey said.

So, she began lighting the Kwanzaa candelabra with her family and practicing the seven principles that include unity, self-determination and purpose. Those lessons stuck with her children.

"She called me one day and thanked me. `Mommy, I thank you because now I know you can't get anything in this world for free. I have to earn it,'" Dorsey said.

One of the principles of Kwanzaa is creativity. Participants are encouraged to give away handmade gifts. That's why the celebration this weekend offers an African marketplace and a crafts workshop.

The last day of Kwanzaa is January 1.

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