Next year, look for the nuclear family will go even more “nuclear,” with sperm-donor siblings seeking each other out. At the same time, dating will turn more traditional, as the West puts a modern spin on the arranged marriages of the East. And while we’ll never know whether Tom Cruise’s marriage to Katie Holmes was “arranged,” look for more unlikely alliances—seemingly strange pairs will become friends as fast as they become foes and then friends again, feeding the insatiable tabloid machine.

These trends are poised to shatter cultural norms, redefining once-hallowed ground such as family, religion and marriage, to name only a few. When we look back a year from now, we’ll ask, “Have we gone too tabloid?”

Arranged Marriages: Many Westerners respond with resistance and a strong cry against this idea, but consider ABC’s wildly popular primetime show The Bachelor: Each season a bachelor is given the opportunity to select a mate from a prescreened group of eager partners—essentially an arranged marriage. As we become ever more time-poor, watch as singles turn to their extended families to make a match and to specialized services that arrange partnerships online.

Family Reunions Around Dad’s Donor Sperm: It’s Roots Revisited, 21st-century style, as people born of donated sperm track down their half-brothers and -sisters. Those conceived through donor insemination are looking to develop closeness and commonality via their DI siblings; it’s a way to combat the feeling that, as they sometimes say themselves, they’re “half-adopted” or “lopsided.”

Unstrategic Alliances: It all began with those most awkward of best buddies: 41 and 42, namely, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And we’re seeing more odd couples and couplings every day: Brooke Shields blessing Tom Cruise, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham. “Unstrategic” may be something of a misnomer, however: In the age of Brand Me, there’s little that garners more press attention than an unlikely and inexplicable partnership.

The Price Is Righteous: Despite the bad press generated by the indiscretions of religious leaders such as evangelical minister Ted Haggard and myriad Catholic priests, expect the business of religion to boom in 2007. For corporations, churches will become just one more distribution channel, with worshippers serving as word-of-mouth promoters for everything from approved books and movies—like this season’s The Nativity Story—to almost any goods and services. Just take a look at Chrysler’s sponsorship of Patti LaBelle’s 14 city tour of urban mega-churches this past November.

Missing Children: European couples aren’t breeding as they used to: Today, the average woman in the EU gives birth to just 1.48 children. At the start of the last century, one person in four on the globe lived in Europe; now it’s only one in 10. That means the next generation will be too small to fund the continent’s traditionally generous social welfare programs.

Brand Sluts: A term first heard in the blogosphere to mean an obsession with consumerism but adapted and popularized by Marian in 2005 as a way to define consumers who flit from one brand to the next with no sense of fidelity to any of them. While the connotation is negative, brand sluts are, in fact, savvy consumers; 2007 will see more of us get smart and refuse to “grow old with” any single brand.