A black writer who still remembers his shock as a child seeing his first black Santa Claus ponders the spiritual significance of Kwanzaa. This year, he writes, the Afrocentric holiday founded by Ron Karenga in 1966 will assume greater significance in the wake of the Million Man March, whose core principles Karenga also authored. PNS commentator Linn Washington Jr. is author of "Black Judges on Justice" (New Press 1995).

PHILADELPHIA -- The first time I saw a black Santa Claus I was twelve years old. It was the early sixties and the sight was unsettling because Santas were always white, even in black neighborhoods.

While I knew by then that Santa Claus wasn't a real man who somehow managed to shimmy down our inoperative chimney every Christmas Eve, it was still hard to consider Old St. Nick as a soul brother -- even in the midst of the Civil Rights revolution.

A few years after my first sighting of this colored Santa Claus, a black nationalist leader on the West Coast named Maulana Ron Karenga unveiled an Afrocentric celebration he called Kwanzaa that was to occur during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. Originally greeted with skepticism, Kwanzaa has grown in acceptance since its inception -- today it claims some 13 million celebrants. This year it will assume new significance in the wake of the Million Man March whose core principles are identical to its own -- not surprising since Ron Karenga authored both.

Kwanzaa was not connected to the traditional holidays and it was not a substitute for Christmas. Karenga's celebration was neither a religious holiday nor one that honored heroic persons. It was a time for African Americans to join together to honor the heritage and traditions of their ancestors.

To say that this Afrocentric celebration met with skepticism in the predominantly Americanized and Christian black community would be an understatement. Typical reactions were, "Quanzi-what?" and "What does this thing really mean?" Although Karenga had modeled Kwanzaa on an African harvest celebration, even many hard-core Movement activists initially viewed Kwanzaa as merely a chocolate version of the vanilla Christmas.

But Kwanzaa was more than a chocolate Christmas for Karenga. At the core of Kwanzaa was a set of seven principles known as the Nguzo Saba, meant to define the shared values of the black community. These values were not only to be the subject of reflection during Kwanzaa, they were to be incorporated into daily life during the rest of the year. These values for life were integral to Kwanzaa's other spiritual purposes, which included planning for the year to come plus working on ways to make oneself a better person and make one's community a better place to live.

The Million Man March on October 16 is bound to invigorate the principles of the Nguzo Saba: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination) and Ujima (collective work and responsibility). The latter principle is integral to the March's central theme, atonement. When more than a million black men rejected the campaign to derail the March by denigrating its originator, Louis Farrakhan, they fulfilled the principles of unity and self-determination -- defining ourselves and speaking for ourselves.

The focus of post-March activities in many cities -- expanding black economic empowerment -- embraces the fourth principle of Ujamma, "building and maintaining our own businesses and profiting from those businesses together." As hundreds of thousands of people register to vote and join organizations in the wake of the March, they are carrying out Kwanzaa's fifth principle of Nia, purpose -- building community to restore the traditional greatness of our people.

The sixth principle of Kuumba -- creativity -- reminds people to "always do as much as we can, in the way we can, to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than when we inherited it."

The last principle of Imani -- faith -- aims to shore up our collective belief in our people, parents, teachers, leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle, a particularly appropriate theme in light of the growing racial polarization in American public life.

Some 30 years after Kwanzaa was founded, the Million Man March was a collective acknowledgment of the relevance of its values. This year as my daughters greet Santa Claus in the shopping malls, they will be thinking about the real meaning of Kwanzaa.