It’s Kwanzaa, the week-long celebration when African Americans honor their African heritage and celebrate their culture with candle lighting, libations, gift giving and a feast. It’s a time when Savvy Aunties can share their family history with their nieces and nephews – as well as an opportunity for non-African American Savvy Aunties to bond with their African American nieces and nephews, by celebrating with them, learning from them, and supporting their pride.

Here are five ways an aunt or godmother can create a strong connection this holiday:

Family History

Use this time to relay your family history with your nieces and nephews. Share photos and old letters – and old family movies. Take it one step further by creating a family tree with your nieces and nephews, connecting them to the family members. They will take special pride is adding their own names to the tree.

The 7 Principles

Review the seven principles of Kwanzaa and ask the children what they can do to upload these principles:

Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and to solve them together.

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Focus on Ujima – Collective Work and Responsibility

Look for ways to help your local African American community through charity and volunteerism. This is something you can share together, and a fantastic way of living the true spirit of Kwanzaa.

Share a Book About Kwanzaa

Whether or not a family celebrates Christmas, it’s very possible that Kwanzaa can get lost in the holiday shuffle. Visit your school-aged nieces and nephews and bring books on Kwanzaa, like The Story of Kwanzaa. Let them read to each other, to you, or to themselves. It will make the kids feel special this time of year.

The Feast!

It wouldn’t be a holiday without food! If you’re not preparing the Kwanzaa Karamu (Kwanzaa Feast) you can still carve out the kids’ favorite dish to prepare just with them.  Traditional foods are a wonderful way to connect children with their heritage.

What are the ways you're celebrating Kwanzaa with your nieces and nephews, Auntie?