Every year, the lobby changes.
Plants are rearranged. Lights appear.
And, with the confidence of something that has never once been questioned, Christian symbolism takes its place in our shared space.
No announcement. No explanation.
Just tradition stretching its legs.
🕰️ A Board of a Certain Vintage
Our board belongs to a generation where things were understood.
Christianity was not considered religion. It was considered background.
Like air. Like silence on difficult topics.
This is not cruelty. It is inheritance.
They were raised in a Canada where diversity arrived later, quietly, and was expected to be grateful.
🏛️ The Lobby as Living Room
The lobby, it seems, is treated less as a shared civic space and more as a collective living room.
And in that living room, certain assumptions hold:
- Everyone celebrates the same holidays
- Everyone feels comforted by the same symbols
- Anyone who doesn’t can politely look away
It’s a charming theory. Very tidy. Entirely fictional.
🎁 “Just a Decoration”
We are told, implicitly, that it is just a decoration.
Which is true, in the same way that accents are “just accents” and traditions are “just habits” – until they belong to someone else.
Then they require committee meetings.
🪑 Inclusion?
No one is excluded outright. That would be rude.
Instead, inclusion is handled with restraint:
You may live here.
You may pay here.
You may belong here.
Just don’t expect to be seen.
This is not hostility.
It is efficiency.
🇨🇦 The Country Moved On. The Lobby Stayed Put.
Canada evolved. Our residents reflect that evolution.
The lobby, however, remains faithful – not to God, but to habit.
And habit, is the most powerful religion of all.
It requires no belief.
Only repetition.
🕯️ A Gentle Seasonal Thought
There is nothing wrong with faith.
There is something quietly revealing about assuming it speaks for everyone.
But then again, assumptions are economical.
They save time. They save thought. They save the trouble of noticing who else might be standing in the room.
Happy holidays.
All of them.
