Every nation, every community, has rituals and observances that bind it together. Every year, Russians celebrate the Soviet Union’s victory in their Great Patriotic War…
American conservatives have a funny relationship with their American patriotism, and really with the whole of American nationality itself. The central feast on the American…
Some time ago, I decided that I would start learning Spanish. I knew that as part of this endeavor, I would have to learn both…
Christians have mastered few things if not disagreeing with other Christians about what being a Christian is, and what believing Christianity actually means. If we…
On November 28, 1493, Christopher Columbus returned to the Caribbean outpost of Navidad after a long voyage only to find a horrifying sight. The men…
If you grew up in the house that I grew up in, you knew you weren’t likely to get away with very much. But one…
Sometimes, I think about spices. If you go to your local grocery store, you can find all kinds. Black pepper, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, and turmeric…
Many non-Americans enjoy teasing Americans about our habit of identifying ourselves using ethnic and cultural descriptors from Old World societies. Looking across this nation, “hyphenated…
Somewhere, buried in a pile of various albums my family keeps lies a superficially unremarkable CD one would not think too different from the musical…
Americans love to indulge, watch, analyze and discuss their nation pastime, and my national pastime I don’t mean baseball, I mean outrage. Americans enjoy more…