Good morning. It is Sunday, February the 22nd. Chances are you've got something to celebrate this month.

By a quirk of the calendar this year, a handful of important religious and cultural holidays have all fallen within the past week.

Last Tuesday marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year,

which many Asian cultures celebrate. It goes by different names. Sometimes it's referred to as the

spring festival. The Vietnamese call it Tet. For Tibetans, it's Lozhar. In case you're wondering,

this is the year of the firehorse, according to the Chinese zodiac. This year, it fell on the same

day as Shrove Tuesday, which is better known to

many Americans as Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, which marks the last day of Carnival. The following

day is Ash Wednesday, which Christians observe as the start of Lent, the period of prayer and fasting

leading up to Easter. For Muslims, it was the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, a similar

period of prayer and fasting to commemorate the revelation of the Quran.

In New York a few nights ago, Muslims gathered right in the middle of Times Square to pray and to break fast together.

Over the next couple of weeks, the Jewish community will observe Purim.

Hindus will celebrate holy, the festival of colors.

This is the beauty of this country.

All across it, Americans are free to celebrate their religion, their culture, or their heritage however they please, just as the founding fathers intended.

It is American pluralism at work, the idea that different religions and cultures and beliefs can coexist

and that Americans from different backgrounds can find some commonality and work

together to uphold this democracy that is so important to us. It's a founding principle of this

country. It's a value that we carry around every day, quite literally. It is engraved or printed

on something that you might have in your pocket or in your wallet right now or your purse.

E. Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. It's America's original motto. We still see it

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