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Posted: December 22nd, 2009 Brant Aycock

The Charlotte Post is the first of what we hope will be many media outlets to announce our upcoming Xchange, which is entitled Xchange Sermons. The event is co-sponsored by Crossroads Charlotte and Mecklenburg Ministries. To read more click HERE.

Posted: December 20th, 2009 Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman

For centuries, humans have celebrated the arrival of winter. Just like today, those gatherings honored family, community and surviving another year. They were also times to eat, drink and be merry.

This year, the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, is Dec. 21 – at 6:38 p.m. EST, to be exact. That doesn't mean much to us now since light and warmth can be obtained by flipping a switch and food is as far away as the nearest refrigerator, restaurant or grocery store.

For our ancestors, however, winter wasn't filled with special recipes and piles of gifts. Winter was the harshest time of the year when food was scarce and the ability to stay warm could, literally, mean life or death. But they knew if they could make it through the longest night, the sun would soon warm their bodies and urge their crops to grow again.

The solstice was a time to celebrate the sun's return. As we do today, the ancients used symbols – such as evergreens and candles – to represent the hopefulness they felt. In good years, they feasted with the knowledge that there was enough food to last until spring.

Cultures and faiths around the world mark the time in their own ways.

Hindus celebrate "Diwali," a five-day festival of lights that focuses on a different deity daily. The date varies on Western calendars but the festival is always the 15th day of Kartika, or the Hindi equivalent to November. This year, the celebration actually began Oct.17. It's a time when women paint their hands with henna, everyone shops for new clothes, and houses are cleaned and decorated with flowers. It's also a time to eat sweets.

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Posted: December 18th, 2009 Tonya Jameson

Inside a home on Draper Avenue, several women sipped wine in the kitchen. Two men stood in the art studio admiring paintings. A couple looked at jewelry. Around the corner on Arnold Drive, two women admired jewelry and munched on ginger cookies.

The two homes were part of the Merry Oaks neighborhood art crawl and holiday celebration. Along with the crawl, residents also lit luminaries that evening. The event was a chance for the quiet neighborhood off Central Avenue to celebrate the holidays and showcase the talented residents.

Merry Oaks is an old neighborhood nestled between Eastway Drive and Briar Creek Road off Central Avenue. Residents are active from fighting zoning changes that would decrease home values to pushing police for a stronger presence. The community Google group often buzzes about everything from a lost cat to speeders to break-ins. It’s also one of those neighborhoods that works hard to be a community. Nine artists set up in six homes for the holiday art crawl.

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Posted: December 17th, 2009 Aleigh Acerni

Crossroads Charlotte occasionally spotlights individuals who are improving the city's social capital.

As a communication professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, Dan Grano teaches his undergraduate and graduate students different ways of thinking about communication, rhetoric, persuasion, and public advocacy. Grano also practices that leadership, as way of helping along a local, educational effort at the grassroots level to bring about change in what he described as the “general broken condition” of the immigration system. “I think the way that immigration is talked about publicly is disturbing,” he said, mentioning some of the problems he sees, like scapegoating, hatred, and blaming immigrants for problems that immigration has little to do with. But Grano doesn’t think it’s a lost cause. “I’m optimistic. I think that there are a lot of opportunities to do good things social justice-wise in Charlotte.”

Why he does what he does? "Personally, I come from a family that immigrated to the U.S. about two generations ago. I try to create a classroom environment where everybody gets to express beliefs and values. I feel really fortunate to be in the position that I’m in as an academic, and I have some training that I can contribute to the community, so some of it is a sense of responsibility. But a lot of it is just a sense of enthusiasm.”

What's next? Grano hopes to organize more educational forums and panel discussions to help further the debate within the local community.

Know someone who is a connector for a community?

Nominate that person to be profiled by a Crossroads Charlotte Correspondent. Email his or her name, phone number and email address and a brief description of what they do to Crossroads Charlotte. If your nominee is selected, you will be contacted by a correspondent.