Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Xmas trees in Cohousing

[kolre001 [at] maroon.tc.umn.edu (kolre001]

Rebecca's points about Xmas trees in cohousing are excellent.

Perhaps it is just that I live in the midwest where the population is 
overwhelmingly homogenous -- white and Christian -- but I have yet to 
encounter a cohousing group that even entertained the question of whether 
or not a Christmas tree would be welcome in the common house or other 
shared spaces.  They just assumed that no one would mind.

As a nonmaterialist  by temperament and a person of Jewish and AmerInd 
ancestry by birth, I have found this profoundly disconcerting.  If there's 
a Christmas tree in the living room, I know for sure that *I* am not home.  
And the very blase nature of the assumption makes me wonder how truly 
welcoming the community is to diversity: I can't imagine a Jewish member of 
any of these communities just nailing a mezuzah to the front doorway of the 
common house without asking; or a Native sitting down to light the sacred 
pipe in the living room without asking (in fact, that sounds like an 
evictable offense to me).

I think we have quite a way to go in our acceptance of and respect for our 
diversity.