Playing the Race Card No More

For the past few years, sending out Kwanzaa cards has been perhaps my favorite holiday season ritual. As recently as three years ago, I would waltz into the local Barnes & Noble and be able to choose between nearly a dozen designs decorated with African-American families proudly wearing wearing red, black and green and lighting a menorah. I’d like to imagine that my habit of sending these cards was subversively addressing the ways the holiday season has become commodified. Most likely I was just being an a-hole.

Last year, I had a more difficult time than usual finding my Kwanzaa cards. I ended up buying a bunch of individual ones at the “Tattered Cover”:http://www.myspace.com/tatteredcover in Denver, where I was attending “_Heeb_ Storytelling”:http://www.heebmagazine.com/galleries/view/. This year, try and try as I can (i.e., no matter how many hours Montana the intern has spent looking for them), I cannot seem to get my hands on a single Kwanzaa greeting card (south of 14th Street, that is). According to a 2004 survey conducted by the National Retail Foundation (and Wikepedia), about 4.7 million Americans celebrate this pan-African festival honoring African-American heritage. The easy conclusion is that what was once a trendy holiday is now being celebrated less. But perhaps the political consciousness that has always been an essential part of Kwanzaa makes its celebrants reluctant to observe it by buying greeting cards from The Man?

In any case, I’m bummed. Either I have to “make my own Kwanzaa cards”:http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/special/holidays/96/fun/kwanzaa.html or look for a new holiday season tradition….

What do you think?