to their elders with gifts and good wishes. And in French Canada, before sitting down to the New Year's feast, the younger members of the family thank their parents for the love and kindness they have received during the past year, and wish them God's blessing.

Thus New Year's seems to be internationally parents' day. Some of the customs related above would be most appropriate for the American scene. For example, if parents would help children "solemnize" their New Year's resolutions, perhaps they would be taken more seriously. And New Year's, too, could be a day when the children perform special services for their parents — relieving mother in the kitchen, or preparing a favorite dish for the father of the family.

Activity Source: Twelve Days of Christmas, The bysystem has allowed others to discover systematic biases in the way we think.

How We Think: Two Systems

The workings of the human brain are more than a bit befuddling. How can we be so ingenious at some tasks and so clueless at others? Beethoven wrote his incredible ninth symphony while he was deaf, but we would not be at all surprised if we learned that he often misplaced his house keys. How can people be simultaneously so smart and so dumb? Many psychologists and neuroscientists have been converging on a description of the brain's functioning that helps us make sense of these seeming contradictions. The approach involves a distinction between two kinds of thinking, one that is intuitive and automatic, and another that is reflective and rational. We will