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Hispanic Heritage means many things in the United States, because the term Hispanic comprises many different groups and histories. Hispanic names an ethnic category that includes people of Spanish and Spanish colonial ancestry.

Juneteenth provides a wonderful opportunity to think about what we may have overlooked and to repair that oversight. The holiday marks a moment when a promise was fulfilled, and it shows us the way that historical mythmaking can overlook significant moments and traditions.

The theme for Black History Month this year is “Black Resistance: A Journey to Equality.” The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) explains that the theme recognizes the ways that “Black people have had to consistently push the United States to live up to its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.” 

A few weeks ago, the American Girl catalog landed in our mailbox. My nine-year-old was excited to see it (as always), and she grew even more excited as she flipped through and found a two-page spread with the heading “Tradition Keepers.” Here were six American Girl Dolls dressed in their holiday finest. Only one of them was wearing a Christmas dress. The other dolls wore fancy outfits to celebrate the Lunar New Year, Eid al-Fitr, Diwali, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. For my daughter, who struggles this time of year as the only Jewish child in her school, that photo spread was meaningful. She saw herself alongside these other “American Girls.” She is unique perhaps in her community, but these images tell her she belongs. More...

In 2010, I ate Thanksgiving dinner at Plymouth, the place where the original “Thanksgiving” took place in 1621. A living history museum at this site features costumed Pilgrims explaining to tourists how they ate, slept, and farmed. Recently, the museum renamed itself “Plimoth Patuxet” to recognize both the colonial settlement the English Pilgrims founded in 1820 and the name given to this place by the Wampanoag nation, the “People of the First Light” who have lived there for 12,000 years.

According to the historian Jill Lepore, the term “burnout” did not exist until 1973. That was when Herbert J. Freudenberger used the term to describe the peculiar kind of exhaustion among healthcare workers at the San Francisco free clinic he managed. The syndrome that Freudenberger described seemed to mainly affect workers in the helping professions. His own staff worked long days with people living on the margins...read more...

June is Pride Month, a time that recognizes and celebrates the historical movement for LGBTQ+ visibility and civil rights. (LGBTQ+ stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, and Others”.) We commemorate this month because it was on June 28, 1969, that the patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, New York, resisted the police officers who arrived in the early morning hours to conduct a vice raid. Over the next few days, clashes continued between law enforcement and LGBTQ+ protesters. These events catalyzed the LGBTQ+ movement for civil rights. Since June 1970, they have been commemorated with celebrations and parades. Pride Month was federally recognized in 1999.