Among the heartfelt Mother's Day tributes published all over the web this weekend, you might have come across this touching entry from BlogHer community member Rosemarie Pena:

In the imaginary world where I am Queen, I just declared tomorrow a global holiday. It is named “The Hello How Are You Really? Day”.

At an unannounced time, a bell will ring. At that moment, all residents of the world must find one person and take a full ten minutes to listen to him or her answer the question, "Hello, how are you really?"

Habari gani! (That's Swahili for What's happening?)

If you are celebrating Kwanzaa, the word for today is Ujamaa, which means "Cooperative Economics." It's a day for thinking about ways in which people of African descent can pool their resources to strengthen their families and communities. It's also the fourth day of the week-long celebration, and I've been asked to do a roundup of photos and reports from the festivities so far.

I spent a little time today searching the Net for New Year's traditions, both old and new. My little family needs the aura of stability created by tradition. If I had had more time, I would've celebrated Kwanzaa this year, a celebration with family-grounding traditions, but my life was a little too chaotic this December, which was par for the course in 2007 and previous years.

People all over the world have special traditions for celebrating the arrival of the new year, and often celebrations include the idea of eating lucky foods, thought to bring happiness and prosperity in the year to come. Just which foods are lucky depends on where you are, but there are some traditions that are pretty widespread. Here are suggestions for lucky foods from around the world, but if you have a New Year's Food tradition that brings you luck, please share your link or recipe in the comments.

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, the celebration that honors African-American heritage. From December 26 to January 1, each day features a special principle symbolized by a candle placed in a kinara. While Kwanzaa has both fans and critics, here we'll stick to Kwanzaa food, around which there can be just one dispute: sweet potatoes or collard greens?