Adams: The deep symbolism of a new year

We all know how daunting the specter of any empty page can be -- that blank slate awaiting a word. Yet, in this season of doubt and hardship for so many, the gift of a new page free of the same old story seems just the thing.

2011 ends as it began -- not hopeless, but unhopeful; dominated by our all-too-human propensity for hatred and violence, yet ripe with promise as signaled by this year's freedom cry from voices in places we'd least expect. Those voices have been crying: It's time for a change.

Happy clean slate. Happy New Year.

Overwhelmed by the season? A change of perspective might help. New years don't all come on Jan. 1, of course. The Chinese New Year of 4710 will arrive on Jan. 23. The Jewish New Year of 5772 arrived in September. Their year 2012 has long ago come and gone. This too shall pass, these calendars tell us.

Last month saw the celebration of al-Hijri, the Islamic New Year 1433, so dated from the Prophet Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina. Happy second chance to relive 600 years with new understanding.

And Happy Thanksgiving. Jan. 1 is the traditional African-American Thanksgiving Day, so declared in 1808 by Absalom Jones, ex-slave and co-founder of the AME Church, upon the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. A telling reminder it is. What a hefty price we humans have paid for what the gods made free.

Happy Kwanzaa, too. How wonderful it is to transit the annual year-end-year-begun season with this weeklong spiritual gift-giving.

Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by Maulana Ron Karenga, then a University of California PhD candidate. This was during the civil rights era, with its daily terrors -- sheriffs unleashing dogs and fire hoses on men, women and children who were invoking their human right to protest oppression.

To heal the wounds of African-American footsoldiers -- "in the army of the Lord," as we said back then -- Karenga created a seven-day cultural celebration spanning Dec. 26 through Jan. 1 each year.

Distilling ancient African teachings into seven principles -- in Swahili, the Nguzo Saba -- each day was dedicated to a principle. A symbolic kinara, or candelabra, of seven candles affirmed each day's ideal. Instead of a truckload of gifts on one Christmas Day (which many people then as now could ill afford), children would receive one small symbolic gift each day.

Born of African-American history and heritage, the gifts of Kwanzaa, as with all good ideas, offer riches worth sharing for our common good.

Today, Dec. 30, is Nia: purpose. This principle reminds us to make the building and developing of our communities our collective vocation, to restore our people to their traditional greatness -- a fitting sentiment for a nation at ideological war with itself in a world on the brink of financial ruin.

From the annual second chance by which nature keeps our world spinning comes this season of endings and beginnings, of renewal and purpose.

A spiritual threads its way into memory: "How we got ovah" -- over -- enslaved Africans would sing. This was the wisdom of a people on far too intimate terms with heartbreak. "My soul looks back in wonder, how we got ovah."

Then they would reach deep into their pockets of wisdom to draw upon these words, "Praise the bridge that carries you over" -- honoring both the premise and promise of life.

Here at the edge, this brink of the new year, crossing our rickety bridge into 2012, Happy clean slate. 2011 is ovah. Happy new beginning.

Janus Adams is an author, historian and social commentator.

[WEBBOX]The Nguzo Saba: the seven days and seven principles of Kwanzaa

December 26: Umoja (Unity) -- To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community and nation.

December 27: Kujichagulia (Self-determination) -- To define ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

December 28: Ujima (Collective work and responsibility) -- To build and maintain our community together, to make our sisters' and brothers' problems our problems and to solve them together.

December 29: Ujamaa (Cooperative economics) -- To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.

December 30: Nia (Purpose) -- To make as our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

December 31: Kuumba (Creativity) -- To do always as much as we can in whatever way we can in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than when we inherited it.

January 1: Imani (Faith) -- To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.