Extravagance

Two weeks before Christmas, I was hurrying from a community health forum that my organization had helped to sponsor, anticipation effervescent in my breast. I had to stop at the grocery store because I was planning on making a pot of gumbo for my boss for his birthday lunch; I ran home and chopped up the Holy Trinity and set the roux gently sizzling. When the gumbo was finished, I skipped across the street in the snappy cold, under the floating airplanes that passed for stars and and the light from the bridge over Steel Grey River to my friends' Pierogy Party. We helped to roll out the dough and form the dumplings, and the host sizzled them in a pan as we munched on Bulgarian salad, sighed over whisky-soaked raspberry truffles, and sipped bison grass vodka. A friend, born in Wales, taught us how to say cheers in Welsh, and I compared the words to the Irish words I've learnt. When the night was over, I made a list of the ingredients I would need for the next day: the gumbo, the rice, the ingredients for the sweet tamales that we would have at the office Christmas party the day after next .  I went over the recipe I would use the next night to make a bûche de Noël and thought about the biscotti I was planning to make for Christmas presents. The abundance of it all took my breath away: the help of the team that put together the health forum, the laughter of my friends, the twinkling street lights, the richness of world with its Polish vodka and Welsh greetings, the bounty of the food, from the vegetables to the sweets. The grace and the joy were extravagantly boundless.

the bûche de Noël

Christmas and Chanukah treats

My mom's Christmas cookies

 What do you think? Is this extravagant celebrating a distraction from the meaning of Christmas? I thought, as I settled into my apartment after that night, that this extravagance was the best way to celebrate Christmas. Can you think of anything more extravagant, more excessive, than God coming into our midst, taking up our flesh, our trials but also our laughter, our fish cooked on a fire by the sea, our weddings and wine,  our stargazing, our communion? Christmas isn't about getting more stuff, to be sure. But Christmas is about being totally, extravagantly present: to the goodness of creation, to one another, to the prodigal presence of God-with-us.

A camel in church - how extravagant is that?