I've spent a lot of Thanksgivings on the road with my band so anytime that I can spend Thanksgiving with my family in a traditional aspect eating sweet potatoes and cranberries and stuffing and all the trappings of Thanksgiving and then get on a treadmill the next day extra long I'm happy.

Nowadays many Americans have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At cemeteries across the country the graves of the fallen are sadly ignored and worse neglected.

I am going to take something I learned over in Israel. Their Independence Day is preceded the 24 hours before with Memorial Day so it gives them a chance to serve and reflect and then celebrate. I am going to try to start that tradition here in America.

I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song.

It always depresses me when people moan about how commercial Christmas is. I love everything about it. The tradition of having this great big feast slap bang in the middle of winter is an essential thing to look forward to at the end of the year.

Whatever he does should be seen as working at the Presidency and if he goes to Colorado for Christmas it should be for a minimum amount of time the family tradition and family get-together aspect emphasized and it be seen as a working vacation.

One Christmas build-up tradition however has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'

My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house.

Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions I beg you.

It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.