ArticleA "Wonder of Convention"

Even if the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, things like Wellington's "living statues" catch the beholder's eye for a reason - and the reason is that they are cute, funny and quite original. However, if you go for a walk in some local woods and stumble upon a cluster of evergreen trees, you might easily pay no attention to them (or, quite literally, not see the trees for the wood). It takes the magic of the Christmas season to turn a routine object into a powerful symbol of goodwill, celebration and intrinsic happiness thus creating what might be called a "wonder of convention". 

St. Catherine, the Patron Saint of Montreal, might have never met Jesus Christ, but it was obvious that the street bearing her name was quite familiar with the tree named after the "Saviour from Nazareth" and devoted to his birth… It was on a rather nice and not even especially cold evening that I found myself strolling along St. Catherine. The street was full of hurrying people, as it probably always is on any given day, independently of the season. Christmas was still weeks away, and there was no particular reason to expect any of its special features to come to the foreground. I stopped at a rather big intersection as the light was red, and suddenly…there it was: a Christmas tree in its full attire, fresh and festive as if smiling at all those watching it. It seemed that people around me caught the mood and started smiling back, at the tree and at each other. Probably I was getting delirious for an instant…