When my friend, the illustrious blogger Book Club Girl, asked me to come up with a reading list for a year's worth of book club reads, I thought, "Oh easy. I just wrote Don't Know Much About Literature with my daughter Jenny Davis. I can come up with twelve great...

So Mommy was kissing Santa underneath the mistletoe last night.

Surely, you've wondered why. What does a parasitic plant have to do with the birth of the baby Jesus?

Like other evergreens, mistletoe --a parasitic plant that attaches to other trees-- remained green in winter, even as the trees...

During the past few years, the so-called "War on Christmas" has been a staple of conservative broadcasters and the religious right. Their basic idea: Christmas is under attack by Grinchy atheists and secular humanists who want to remove any vestige of Christianity from the public space. Any criticism of public...

Almost everything we love and cherish about Christmas comes from a time before Christianity. So here's the real first Christmas question: Why all the fuss over December 25?

For starters, the Gospels never mention a precise date or even a season for the birth of Jesus. How then did we...

I'd like to propose a candidate for a new national holiday. December 1-Rosa Parks Day.
On December 1, 1955, a black seamstress would not budge. And all America shook.

History is taught as the record of presidents, kings and generals. But sometimes it is the extraordinary story of an...

With Thanksgiving around the corner, cutouts of Pilgrims in black clothes and clunky shoes are sprouting all over the place. You may know that the Pilgrims sailed aboard the Mayflower and arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. But did you know their first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three whole days? What...

"The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month." That was the moment in 1918 at which they put a stop to the mindless killing of World War I with an Armistice. Back then, it was called the "Great War" or the "War to End All Wars" --...

Generally, we don't associate the iconic Penguin Books with "dirty books." And neither did a British jury. On November 2, 1960, Penguin won a landmark British publishing case when Lady Chatterley's Lover was deemed "not obscene" by a jury of three women and nine men. Penguin had published the novel,...

When I was a kid in the early 1960s, the autumn social calendar was highlighted by the Halloween party in our church. In these simpler day, the kids all bobbed for apples and paraded through a spooky "haunted house" in homemade costumes -- Daniel Boone replete with coonskin caps for...

"It's the -- the cross is the -- is the most common symbol of -- of -- of the resting place of the dead."

Those were the words of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia during a Supreme Court questioning session. The case involves a cross honoring veterans that has...

The headline was a shocker.

All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009

I read about the possible closing of the Philadelphia Free Library -- in the city where Benjamin Franklin helped invent the public library in...

September 15, like September 11, deserves to be remembered. On this day in 1963, a murderous bombing took the lives of innocent Americans -- four children. The terrorist bombers were also Americans -- members of the Ku Klux Klan. In recording the bombing 20 years later, Howell Raines once wrote,...

That is completely misleading headline aimed at getting your attention. It worked.

On this date, August 26, in 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified by the necessary two-thirds of the states.

"You've come a long way baby."

It was 233 years ago that the brilliant Abigail...

She was the town's meter maid. And yes, the Beatles had recently sung about "Lovely Rita." But this lady was not exactly lovely in her uniform. She was a plus-sized meter maid, and she was not "the most comely of maidens." All of that probably made her already unpopular job...

Does this sound familiar?

It started with a "DWB" -- "driving while black." On August 11, 1965, an all-too-frequent stop of a black man by a white police officer exploded into one of the worst urban riots in American history.

This one didn't end with a shared beer at the...

When Administrations Lie, Thousands Die.

dontknowmuch.com

That is today's history lesson on the 45th anniversary of passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by Congress on August 7, 1964. Since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and Vietnam War might as well be the Punic...

It's summer. Do you know where your IQ is?

For most school age kids, summer means vacation, camp, the pool. You know: A few months of fun. "No more teachers, No more books."

But that last part is not true. Summer also means the often dread Summer...

Every so often, news stories and other events converge to create a "teaching moment." This is one of those moments when you can curse the darkness or light a candle. I will try and shed some light.

Patrick Buchanan's recent "White men built America" rant on MSNBC (subject of an...

I did not hear right wing talking head Pat Buchanan's remarks on African American history the other day on MSNBC. According to an account on the Huffington Post, Buchanan and host Rachel Maddow had a hot exchange during which Buchanan said:

"White men were 100% of the people...

Writing on the op-ed pages of the New York Times on July 7, 2009, columnist David Brooks clearly touched a nerve.

His column, entitled "In Search of Dignity," topped the Times list of most emailed articles and drew hundreds on online comments, many of them laudatory. Brooks used...