Roses to the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership and its assistant director, Meg McGurk, for using Keep America Beautiful grant funds to purchase and place cigarette butt disposal receptacles on East Franklin Street.

Cigarette butts contain non-biodegradable cellulose acetate and often travel through storm drains into local creeks. Research has shown that fish and small aquatic organisms die when exposed to the more than 165 carcinogenic compounds stored in cigarette filters. Researchers have found that birds' eggs may not hatch when cigarette filters comprise part of the nesting materials. Cigarette filters have been found in the stomachs of dead fish, birds, whales and other marine creatures who mistake them for food.

Litter begets litter. The new receptacles will help to prevent the buildup of cigarette butts improperly disposed of in planters, gutters and storm drains, and on sidewalks along Franklin Street.

And Roses, too, to smokers who properly dispose of their cigarette butts and help keep our town clean, improve our water quality and protect wildlife.

Thanks to Wendy Smith, Chapel Hill's environmental education coordinator, for this Rose suggestion.

Roses to the organizers and volunteers of Mitzvah Day, a wonderful event that marked its sixth year on Sunday.

Mitzvah Day, coordinated by the Durham-Chapel Hill Jewish Federation in conjunction with local synagogues, the Lerner School and the wider Jewish community, is a day of service held annually on Christmas Day.

More than 450 volunteers gathered Sunday for breakfast and then spread out through the community to serve more than 20 local agencies. They visited the sick and homebound, cooked meals at local shelters, cleaned parks and trails, delivered books and gifts to those in need, made blankets for the homeless, and perform other important tasks.

This year, for the first time, the volunteer activities were capped with "Zumbathon," an event to raise money for Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, a national nonprofit dedicated to preventing and alleviating hunger among people of all faiths.

Mitzvah Day is an example of the amazing things that can be accomplished when people from different faiths and backgrounds work together for the betterment of all.

Roses to Jim Watson, whose annual Christmas show has become a tradition almost as venerable and delightful as egg nog and stockings by the fire.

Watson, one of the founding members of the great Red Clay Ramblers, played his first holiday show more than a quarter of a century ago, and he's done it every year since. Most years he's done it at the Cave, Chapel Hill's oldest tavern, and he still does, although in recent years he's added a second show in Hillsborough.

Everybody loves the sing-along set of carols, for which Watson usually distributes lyric sheet. But the best thing about is the warmth and sense of shared joy that fills the room.