As midnight approaches on December 31st, more than a few of us will crack open a bottle or two of champagne to help toast the New Year. With a few choice facts about the bubbly stuff, you can look knowledgeable rather than just tipsy when you drain your flute. Here are a few little nuggets […]

Christmas is both a sacred religious holiday and a worldwide cultural and commercial phenomenon. For two millennia, people around the world have been observing it with traditions and practices that are both religious and secular in nature. Christians celebrate Christmas Day as the anniversary of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, a spiritual leader whose […]

For many families, the Elf on the Shelf doll is a holiday tradition — one that reminds children to evade pre-Christmas trouble. For one professor, though, the Elf on the Shelf is “a capillary form of power that normalizes the voluntary surrender of privacy, teaching young people to blindly accept panoptic surveillance and reify hegemonic power.” […]

Forget about a white Christmas.  (photo source: FOXNEWS) A band of high winds, thunderstorms and soaking rains from holiday storms are poised to derail travel plans for millions of Americans ready to celebrate Christmas. “It’s going to be a rainmaker, for sure. There’s the threat of locally heavy rain and this system could be windy […]

by Anna James Most small businesses juggle several social media accounts at once, and with great difficulty. Thankfully, web developers have come to the rescue with a myriad of applications to maximize the social-media experience across all platforms. Here are 18 of the most effective and time-saving applications currently on the market across the five most […]

By JOHN TIERNEY Just be yourself. The advice is as maddening as it is inescapable. It’s the default prescription for any tense situation: a blind date, a speech, a job interview, the first dinner with the potential in-laws. Relax. Act natural. Just be yourself. But when you’re nervous, how can you be yourself? How you can force […]

By LAUREN MARKOE Religion News Service You may know the basic props of Hanukkah: a menorah, a dreidel and chocolate coins. But here’s the inside story on Hanukkah, which began Tuesday at sundown. Q • Isn’t this a no-big-deal Jewish holiday that’s pumped up just because it falls so close to Christmas? Hanukkah is considered […]

By Karen Gullo  Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s changes to iTunes in 2006 were like a new-and-improved candy bar that’s bigger, has more chocolate and contains a toxic preservative making it lethal, a consumer lawyer said in a bid to convince a jury the iPod maker wanted to kill competition and not upgrade its music service. Patrick […]

By Anthony Breznican  Luke Skywalker was a huge part of Mark Hamill’s past, and although he still can’t talk about the plot of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the actor has opened up to EW about the emotional experience of returning to that far-off galaxy. The first trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens roused extreme feelings from fans around the world, and Hamill says […]