The Kwanzaa con.

ITEM: "Although Kwanzaa is culturally an African-American holiday," said Emily Raabe in the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune for December 24, 2003, "'its messages of unity, family, togetherness, creativity and strength can be incorporated into any family's cultural lexicon.... Kwanzaa was launched [in 1966] by Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach, to celebrate both the roots and the modern identities of the African-American community."

BETWEEN THE LINES: Kwanzaa was concocted by an ex-con named Ron Everett, whose alias is Karenga; his black nationalist cult (United Slaves) became a violent rival of the Black Panthers at UCLA.

Five years after his invented holiday took root, Karenga was convicted of torturing two female followers. He had them stripped and beaten with an electrical cord. The women were also "disciplined," according to the Los Angeles Times, by being forced to drink detergent, and one was tortured with a soldering iron. In 1971, he was sentenced to one to 10 years in prison for these crimes. He was released in 1975, and four years later, Karenga had become the head of Black Studies at Cal State, Long Beach.

In a recent message addressed to black Christians in New Visions Commentary, La Shawn Barber emphasized that Kwanzaa is a "made-up creed cobbled together by a man hostile to the very God you claim to worship! According to Karenga, Christianity is a myth.... He says this about Christianity: 'Belief in spooks who threaten us if we don't worship them and demand we turn over our destiny and daily lives must be categorized as spookism and condemned.'"