“It’s only a Christmas tree” — when the majority calls its culture neutral

The team is planning the company’s December gathering. Anna shows an invitation with a Christmas tree and presents.

— We’ll make it a neutral holiday event. No religious symbols.
— What about the tree? — Maja asks.

Anna sees an ordinary December decoration. Maja notices that the “normal background” also comes from a particular tradition.

What really happened

Anna sees the Christmas tree as part of an ordinary December at work. She has been surrounded by it for years, so its cultural meaning barely registers anymore. Maja is pointing to something different: the tree is not an object without history or meaning. It comes from a specific tradition, even if in many workplaces it has become highly secularised. The scene does not require us to assume anything about Maja’s religion. The mechanism is simpler: what surrounds the majority everywhere can begin to look like the absence of culture, even though it remains a particular cultural code.

What the research says

Research on diversity in organizations shows that the practices of dominant groups are often described as “normal”, “professional” or “neutral”, while minority differences are more visible and more likely to be labeled. Research on normalisation practices offers a useful example from an academic hospital in the Netherlands: the authors showed how “professionalism as neutrality” and “equality as treating everyone the same” could obscure unequal consequences of everyday norms (Leyerzapf et al., 2018). That does not mean a Christmas tree is inherently discriminatory. It means dominant customs can be harder to notice precisely because they are dominant.

How to handle it

An organization does not have to remove every tradition in order to be inclusive. It should, however, describe traditions honestly and check whether one group’s customs are being presented as the obvious default for everyone. A company can keep the Christmas tree while also making room for other meaningful traditions—or simply ask employees what forms of gathering make sense to them. The general rule: before calling something “neutral”, try looking at it through the eyes of someone for whom that practice was not the background of childhood. Often what looks like neutrality is simply culture that has become extremely familiar.

How Empatyzer and Em can help

Empatyzer can help an organization notice that something the majority experiences as a “neutral custom” may not feel neutral to everyone. The cultural layer and aggregated team view can show that norms vary widely, but the system should not infer anyone’s religion or worldview from a profile. Em can instead help a leader ask a better question: “Does the way we mark this period give everyone room to participate—or not participate—without a social penalty?” In practice, inclusion is often less about removing traditions than about not presenting the majority tradition as the only natural default. Micro-lessons help teams spot the moment when group familiarity starts being mistaken for universality.