They had a Christmas party tonight, my students did. It was a nearly four-hour affair– a progressive dinner in holiday festive attire that was attended by Very Nearly Every person in their class.
And although some complained about the “holiday festive” thing and others wondered about the “holiday festive” thing, they all looked Very Nice. Some of the boys even wore ties. And it really was a beautiful evening.
We concluded the festivities with a white elephant gift exchange, and I think– I really do– that by this time they were getting a bit punchy. They have, after all, just completed hours and hours of exams after a semester that has been a big adjustment (what with the high school being brand new and all), and now the pressure is off and the party was in motion and, well…. Things Got Loud.
No one behaved badly– not in the least. But they were Loud. All of them. And this made the unwrapping of the white elephant gifts and the exclamations over the white elephant gifts and the trade-ins/trade-offs of the white elephant gifts Louder Still. For much of it, I sat as still as I could on a tufted ottoman and held the garbage bag for the wrapping paper and thought to myself, “Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhh.” But I didn’t say it out loud because, honestly, who would have heard me?
And then we (the present faculty) handed out our Christmas gifts– the dearest Trinity High School ornaments– and said our “Merry Christmas”-es, and walked out into the cold air in search of our transportation home.
And when I got home, I filled the bathtub just as full as ever I possibly could and I lit some candles to go around it. I poured the bubbles in so that they almost crested over the top, and when I got in I lay very still for a few moments and listened to the silence of the bubbles popping everywhere all around me: the breakings of the softest air, the releasings of sweet-smelling tension.
And later, when I decided that my mind could handle it, I opened Joseph and His Brothers, that neglected book that I’m studying (supposedly) for my Master’s thesis, and I began to read:
“All the same, He lay in bonds and was a God awaiting the future– and this established a certain similarity between Him and these suffering divinities; and it was for this reason that Abram held long conversations at Shechem with Malkizedek, who was an attendant priest at the temple of the Baal of the Covenant and El-Elyon, concerning whether and, if so, to what extent there might be some similarity in the natures of his Adon and Abraham’s own Lord.
God, however, had kissed His fingertips and– much to the secret vexation of the angels– cried out: “Unbelievable, how well this clod of earth understands Me! Have I not begun to make a name for Myself through him? Truly, I will anoint him!”
Ahhhhhhh…………
