Kwanzaa 2025: Everything you need to know about the week-long holiday<\/a><\/p>\n“It’s a part of their lives and it’s a part of their tradition and a part of their culture and their heritage and they want to come back,” said Sydney Adams with Malcom X College.<\/p>\n
Local photographer Rodney Wright of Image Makers Photography says he’s set up shop at Malcolm X College going on 15 years during Kwanzaa.<\/p>\n
“I want them to walk away with the values of Kwanzaa which is sharing, love and community,” Wright said.<\/p>\n
He says his personal mission as a photographer to capture love highlights what Kwanzaa is all about.<\/p>\n
“You look around and it’s the spirit of Kwanzaa,” Wright said. “It’s the music, the food and everything. It brings you back.”<\/p>\n
Celebrated from December 26 through January 1, Kwanzaa is a holiday founded in 1966 as a celebration of African heritage and culture. It focuses on seven principles: Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity and Faith.<\/p>\n
Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday, so it’s observed by people from different religious backgrounds.<\/p>\n
“This is an opportunity to come together with community,” said Barbara Meschino with Malcom X College “I’m really passionate about being in community, so this is a great way to be in community.”<\/p>\n
In the city’s Bronzeville neighborhood, families gathered to tell stories, to sing and to spend time together, highlighting what Kwanzaa is really all about.<\/p>\n
“What it personally means to me is respecting the principles that Kwanzaa does and means,” said Pam Morris-Walton with the Bronzeville Children’s Museum. “They get to do arts and crafts. They get to sing. They do a candlelight performance.”<\/p>\n
Kwanzaa celebrations continue Saturday at Malcolm X College. Daily programming begins at 10 a.m. and runs until 6 p.m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2025 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source abc7chicago.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (WLS) — Chicago celebrated the first day of Kwanzaa with events across the city to honor the holiday. Kwanzaa’s purpose is all about celebrating peace and unity and community. ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24\/7. Click here to watch Spirits were high at Malcolm X College on Friday as the community came together to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2214844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[427990],"class_list":["post-2214843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-427990"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Chicago-celebrates-1st-day-of-Kwanzaa-with-holiday-events-across.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2214843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214845,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214843\/revisions\/2214845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2214844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2214843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2214843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2214843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}