I know it isn’t a church holiday, but when we were kids, giving each other those little red and pink cards on Valentine’s Day was a favorite pastime. I don’t suppose we ever really figured out the meaning of that innocuously short query that we scribbled in third grade penmanship on those floppy heart-shaped cut-outs. Nevertheless we handed it out to all our friends at school: “Will you be Mine?”

If the 19th century sage Ralph Waldo Emerson had a page on Facebook, perhaps his “favorite quotation” would be his own words: “Events are in the saddle and tend to ride mankind.” Events really are in the saddle these days, aren’t they? A contagious unrest in the Middle East spreading street riots from country to country.

Three people died this week: Don Kirshner, the veteran music mogul, hailed a “legend” for his creation and management of young rock groups in the 60s and 70s, including the Monkees; Sargent Shriver, described as the most influential non-elected politician in U.S. history, serving his brother-in-law John Kennedy’s administration as head of the Peace Corp and leading the War on Poverty for President Lyndon Johnson; and, an unnamed and unknown elderly man in Mongolia. The first two are being feted in the national press for their portfolios of achievement.

When was the last time snow was on the ground in 49 of our 50 states? Welcome to the Winter of 2011. But the tragic killings and attempted assassination of Congresswoman Giffords in Tuscon, Arizona, last weekend are a somber reminder that this nation’s greatest challenge is not meteorological but moral.

Scientists think they’ve found the secret to our good and bad habits. It has to do with the pleasure-sensing chemical dopamine, coursing up and down our body’s internal highways.

“Return that gift before you get it.” Leave it to Amazon.com to “solve” our gift-receiving woes!

Poor Europe—“white Christmas”—bad timing. The wintery blast that has piled a mound of snow across Europe the past few days might have started out a “Christmas winter wonderland.” But the only wonder left now is how to untangle this perfect storm of meteorological and technological gridlock that has turned the continent’s major airports into bed and breakfasts, minus the bed and the breakfast. Nobody’s humming “White Christmas” anymore (especially since that Irving Berlin composition is a distinctly American tradition). No wonder the mayor is so uptight!

Did you see that hastily snapped picture of Prince Charles and Camilla? On their way last Thursday evening to a London gala, the royal couple’s vintage Rolls Royce limousine inadvertently drove into an unrelated street riot and was suddenly engulfed by a sea of demonstrating youth. When the young rioters (who were protesting Parliament’s decision to hike tuition fees in UK universities) spotted the future king of England and his wife inside the automobile, they turned on the limousine, pelting it with eggs, smashing open a window and threatening to who-knows-what!

"12 Daze of Christma$”—that’s how the Boston Herald headlined the story this week of PNC Wealth Management’s annual analysis of the beloved Christmas song.

MISS YOUR CELL PHONE? I read historian Benson Bobrick’s fascinating Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired.