Nowadays you can travel the world and be assured a daily meal at McDonald's no matter where you are. Although a good number of people in central Europe are still perplexed to find costume-clad children on their doorsteps demanding candy on October 31st, Halloween has found its place between the Thanksgiving and St.Martin celebrations thanks to persuasive marketing endeavours. And thanks to Howie Mandell, Canadians are about to be presented with another US rip-off as Deal or No Deal joins the string of already existing Canadian versions of US television successes.

To be sure, this is not an anti-globalization rant. However, Vaclav Havel made an interesting point when he said that globalization with its mass culture exacerbates nationalistic tendencies. In other words, a lack of understanding of one's own culture or the inability to fully integrate and understand a country's cultural identity could lead to manifestations of extreme nationalistic ideas and behaviour in order to fill the identity void.

Is this a factor contributing to the ongoing separatist movement in Quebec, which relies on outdated grievances to whip up support for its cause? Or is it that our blind acceptance of this mass culture detracts us from actively seeking our Canadian cultural identity, which in doing so, might just shed some light on why Harper's latest resolution to define Quebecers as a nation should not be seen as merely a political move? What exactly is our Canadian culture? our Canadian identity? and how do we define it? When a Brit insists on plum pudding for Christmas and a German makes prediction about the coming year by pouring molten lead into water on New Year's eve and the Spanish are still opening gifts on January 6th, we are not simply dealing with anecdotal stories of how one celebrates the season. These are customs and traditions which have been entrenched in each of these cultural communities for centuries and constitute an important part of each person's identity. The failure to understand one's own culture and how to identify with it likely prevents one from accepting another's need for cultural and social recognition.

So why not skip that next episode of Prison Break and see what the latest exhibit at the local art gallery is all about. Put down that Nano iPod and find out why there is a museum at the other end of town or call up some friends and take a walk down to the river or take your skates and kids and dog to the frozen pond in the park. We don't need advertising execs to tell us what we need or who we are. Rather it is up to us to understand where we come from in order to clearly decide where we want to go. Happy New Year!