Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, I'd like to give anyone celebrating Kwanzaa a chance to talk back to Marjorie Taylor Greene. The congresswoman from way out and right field is in the news today for tweeting a rebuke to a group of College Republicans who had sent out a Happy Kwanzaa tweet. As the Daily News reported it, the headline is, "Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene Rants Against Fake Religion Kwanzaa as Black Holiday Begins."

It says, "Greene has denounced Kwanzaa as a fake religion--" Her words, "just as millions of Black people start to celebrate the weeklong holiday. The far-right Georgia lawmaker berated the national College Republicans for "pandering and BS" after the GOP group tweeted a seemingly innocuous happy holiday message." Her tweet included, "Stop. It's a fake religion. People are tired of pandering and BS." Greene suggested that the College Republicans should avoid political correctness. If it wants to galvanize the conservative base of the GOP, says the Daily News, she tweeted, "You aren't bringing in new voters, you are turning them away."

The Daily News says, "The College Republicans did not respond to Greene's criticism about the tweet." Daily News does point out that Kwanzaa, though called by Marjorie Taylor Greene a fake religion, is not a religion, it's a festival. Here on the third day of Kwanzaa, we would like to give anyone who celebrates the holiday for your own personal observance an opportunity to talk back to Marjorie Taylor Greene and tell her and everyone else who might have a little more curiosity if they don't celebrate Kwanzaa themselves, what the holiday means to you and how you observe it.

If you celebrate Kwanzaa, the phones are yours for this segment. You are invited to tell Marjorie Taylor Greene and everyone else how you celebrate Kwanzaa and why you celebrate Kwanzaa at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. While your calls are coming in, I'll share a few things first. If you don't follow news about the extreme right, you might not remember who Marjorie Taylor Greene is. She's the freshman Republican House member from Georgia who, for example, tweeted on Sunday that, "The Fauci-funded, Wuhan lab-created virus has been," and I don't even need to go on to the content enough to say that she called COVID, "the Fauci-funded virus."

Another example, back in February, the House voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments because of conspiracy theories and hateful things she has said in the past. One of them was supporting the idea for a while that the Parkland High School shooting was a false flag operation. She later reversed that position, but there were enough of those kinds of things that even 11 Republicans were among those voting for her removal from the committees. I'm not going to repeat any more of the things Greene has said because why give them that oxygen?

I'll just quote the Republican leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy who said at the time, "Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference. I condemn those comments unequivocally." That from the House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. She is that Marjorie Taylor Greene. You get to talk back to her after she called Kwanzaa a fake religion when it's not even religion. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Tell everybody how you celebrate.

As your calls are coming in, I'll also read briefly from an article published yesterday on the Black-oriented website, The Root about one person's gradual embrace of Kwanzaa in their own life. The writer's name is Panama Jackson. The headline is, "My Family Celebrated Kwanzaa For The First Time. Here's How It Went." It starts by saying, "Despite my pretty obvious penchant for and desire to support the spirit behind rooting for everybody Black, I've been pretty intentionally absent from the Kwanzaa party."

Let me go on ahead and note here that I'm fully aware that the founder of Kwanzaa or at least the individual given credit for its founding, Ronald Everett, AKA Maulana Karenga has a pretty nefarious history and isn't exactly a beacon of Black upliftment. That's not why I didn't celebrate Kwanzaa. Marjorie Taylor Greene also criticized Karenga in her tweets, so they agreed on that much. Then Panama Jackson writes, "Kwanzaa just wasn't a thing where I'm from. When I got to Morehouse College and much more intentionally and actively pro-Black environment, nobody in my immediate circle talked about it much, though several of my homies did in fact celebrate it with their families at various points in their lives."

Then Panama adds, "At some point, as I became much more opinionated and vocal about those opinions, I remember being firmly in the anti-Kwanzaa camp though I can't even remember having a single reason why. Over time as I've gotten more into my own personal relationship with Blackness and especially the celebration of said Blackness, I found that any objections I had pretty much evaporated once I started researching the principles, et cetera. My biggest objection seemed to be the African leaning nature of it, the Swahili terminology, the West Africani symbology, et cetera, but even that--" Panama Jackson writes, "is a dumb reason for objection.

Hell, I was probably wearing a dashiki while objecting, and true story since I never celebrated, I really had no idea what I wasn't celebrating, so now, to their change. In what might be a small glimpse into how my mind works, I was scrolling through Instagram one day in December when I saw a post by a Black-owned business I patronize in Washington, DC, Nubian Hueman advertising a Kwanzaa kit that they sell, that included everything you would need to celebrate Kwanzaa. I said to myself, "Self, I should buy a Kwanzaa kit.'"

Then they wrote, "My own family, using the guide present in the kit we purchased and after watching some videos and following along with friends of mine who celebrate Kwanzaa annually, set up each of Kwanzaa's seven nights starting on December 26 to light the appropriate candles in the kinara, the candle holder for Kwanzaa, and had a discussion about the Nguzo Saba and the corresponding principles for the day.

In a world where I used to mispronounce the words, I now know them by heart and by candle, Umoja, unity, Kujichagulia, self-determination, Ujima, collective works and responsibility, Ujamaa, cooperative economics, Nia, purpose, Kuumba, creativity, and Imani, faith." Concludes, for the excerpt that I'm reading, "My family used each night to discuss what the day's principle meant to us individually, even including my five and four-year-olds in the convo, and then discussed how we employ said principles into our daily lives. It was interesting to hear how we each interpret the principles."

That from Panama Jackson on The Root. Now, we're inviting you, if you celebrate Kwanzaa, to call in and talk back to Marjorie Taylor Greene or just tell the universe, including everyone with actual curiosity about other human beings, why and how you celebrate Kwanzaa? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, and we'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. All right, everybody who celebrates Kwanzaa, tell Marjorie Taylor Greene and everyone else how you celebrate and why. We'll start with Judy in Rosedale, New Jersey on WNYC. Hello, Judy.

Judy: Hello. Good afternoon. Good to be on the radio with you.

Brian: Glad you're on. So glad you're on. Tell us about your Kwanzaa celebration. What do you do? What do you want to tell Marjorie Taylor Greene about it?

Judy: Okay, I want to tell Miss Greene and everybody else out there that I celebrate Christmas as well, but I always celebrate Kwanzaa because it is a reflection of my own life, it is a reflection of my ancestors and my people. It's important for me to take that time of reflection about my life, to meditate. I think people are confused because they see or they think that Kwanzaa is a religion, but it's not based in religion. It is grounded in our spirituality, and it is just grounded in that the general essence of who we are as a people. That's why I celebrate Kwanza.

Brian: It's very common to celebrate for people who are Christians as a religion. It's fairly common to celebrate both Christmas and Kwanzaa, right?

Judy: Absolutely, absolutely. Even if it's just taking a look, like this year, what I decided to do was to post each day of Kwanzaa on my Instagram so other people could take a look and see what Kwanzaa was about. I think a lot of people don't really know what it's about and they get their information from other people who may not have an interest in their, I guess, self-gain or in the practice itself. I'm putting it out there because I think people really need to know about it.

It's a way to uplift yourself. It's a way for you to reflect what's going on in your world and in our community. I think in this day and age, that's important, and I think we do it in other ways. We have movements like the Black Lives Matter movement and other movements. We do it in other ways. To me, I feel like it's an offset of that and it brings everybody together on the days of Kwanzaa.

Brian: Judy, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Happy Kwanzaa. We'll go next to Hank in the Bronx. Hank, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Hank: Hi, Brian. First, I want to really thank you for actually trying to have a serious discussion about the topic because one of the things that really disappoints me in a lot of media coverage is that quite honestly, a lot of the coverage is really just very silly in that it seems to recycle the same old tropes, usually having somebody who doesn't know anything about it asking, "What is Kwanzaa and does anybody actually celebrate it?" instead of just doing some very simple journalism and going to people who do and covering actual celebrations and covering it like you would any other topic. I wanted to start out by giving you some props for that.

Brian: Thank you.

Hank: My partner and I have celebrated for probably around the last 15 years or so. I actually did not grow up celebrating it because it wasn't really that prevalent in the community where I was, but particularly now that I've moved to New York City and I'm in contact with a whole lot more people, we usually have a small setup of ourselves at home, of the symbols, and there are public celebrations held throughout the city almost every night of the week. Of course, now with the whole virtual thing, you can actually tune in to celebrations around the country on Facebook or livestream and that kind of thing. That's been very good.

Brian: That's great. By the way, listen to her tweets, "I'm not Black, but if Marjorie Taylor Greene is against it, I'm going to celebrate Kwanzaa." Maybe there'll be some backlash that'll spread the holiday.

Hank: To be honest, to a certain extent, I really don't care what Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks about it.

Brian: Fair enough. Do you want to single out any of the seven principles and what you do on any of the individual days that correspond to an individual principle? Anything like that for you?

Hank: Well, I would say you can't really single one out because they are actually meant to follow each other and to work in conjunction with each other. Singling one out, respectfully, that doesn't really work because the idea is really to think about the interconnectedness between the message behind all of them. The first day, Umoja, unity, how do we think about ourselves as a globally connected people and how do we try to operate on that?

Kujichagulia, the second day, how do we define ourselves and name ourselves? Think about ourselves in ways other than what everybody tells who you are. Today's principal, Ujima, collective work and responsibility. That's followed by Ujamaa, cooperative economics. Nia, the idea of purpose. Why are you here? How are you thinking about how you're going through your life and what are you doing? Then finally, Kuumba, creativity. Finally, the last one, Imani or faith.

At home, and I should say when we have time because I actually need to get back to grading final exams, but at home when we have time, we'll usually do a small candle lighting ceremony and read about one of the principles and think about how we're going to practice that in our lives. That's if we're not going out to an actual ceremony somewhere, which this year probably won't happen because of the pandemic.

Brian: Right. Hank, thanks so much for the call, really great. A few more minutes taking your phone calls about how and why you celebrate Kwanzaa here on Day 3 of the holiday. Here's NMaat in Mount Vernon, you're on WNYC. Hi, NMaat.

NMaat: Hi, Brian. Wow, this is great. Two times on your show in a month. My name's NMaat, thank you. I've been celebrating Kwanzaa almost my whole life. I'll tell my age, I was born in 1968, and Kwanzaa started in 1966. My cousin started celebrating Kwanzaa from the very beginning. She was my first introduction to Kwanzaa and I've been celebrating Kwanzaa my whole life. I'm now with my children and my husband. Every night, we light the candles.

We often go out to celebrations, as your previous caller was saying, to celebrate in the community because it's really about bringing the family and community together. We go sometimes. Dr. Maulana Karenga usually comes to New York to speak. We often go to see him, to get back to the origins of Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa inspired me then to sponsor my business, which you helped to feature on your Shop Listener, 7 Principles 365. We are focused on celebrating Kwanzaa all throughout the year and how to make our lives better, how to help each of our families be stronger, how to build our community, and to work as a global community together.

Brian: That's great. NMaat, I'm glad you got through again. Glad you also got on our Shop Listener series with your business earlier in the month. That's great. I hope you got a lot of customers through the show. Call us again in 2022. Cecily in Teaneck, you're on WNYC. Hi, Cecily.

Cecily: Hi. How are you, Brian? Great to be on. One of the things I wanted to point out, a big misconception with Kwanzaa that I think why uninformed people think it's religion is because of the time frame. It starts the day after Christmas and runs through New Year. One of the reasons that it was even developed like that was because so many families are together during that time period. Kids are home from college and it's time when families are getting it together. It's a perfect time to try and pull everyone together to celebrate all of these elements.

Myself and my family have celebrated it for years. It started when my daughter was much younger and had some good multicultural friends who I wanted to be able to give them a reason to look at another part of their heritage and all of the positive attributes that there are in the African American community. It's just been something that we've done year after year. It goes up on the other side of our Christmas tree, even though it's not religious, but we can slide right into Kwanzaa as soon as Christmas is over.

Brian: That's great. For a lot of people, a Christmas tree is not religious.

Cecily: It really isn't. It's just decorative to make the house look beautiful.

Brian: Cecily, thank you for your call. Amelia in Flushing, you're on WNYC. Hi, Amelia.

Amelia: Hi. How are you, Brian?

Brian: Good. Great to have you on.

Amelia: I was just calling in because I don't celebrate Kwanzaa, although I do enjoy the idea of embracing the principles. I think that I am more interested in recognizing the sacrifices of our ancestors as African Americans and their struggles and their accomplishments. I take this time of the year to embrace that, particularly because of the history of the African American experience in the Underground Railroad. I think that's something worthy of recognizing.

Brian: Amelia, thank you very much, and thanks to all of you who called in to talk back to Marjorie Taylor Greene or otherwise talk about why and how you celebrate Kwanzaa. Happy Kwanzaa to everybody who does celebrate.

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