“How come you're eating two bowls?” Linda scowled at me over the top of her half-reading glasses. “You don't usually eat even one full bowl of my pea soup.”
“'Cause you made it different,” I burped and finished my second bowl. “What did you put in it this time? It's delicious!”
“Well, usually I use yellow peas and add all kinds of stuff like onions, carrots, meat and stock from a ham bone, and several other secret ingredients known only to pea soup sorcerers like me,” Linda said. “This time all I used was dried green peas and a few red pepper flakes to kick it up a notch.” (Linda likes to watch Emeril Live on TV).
“That's all, huh?” I slid back my chair to make for thirds. “It tastes just like what Grandma used to make.”
Linda sighed. The Grandma comparison she has learned to live with, but she has never liked it much. “Go figure!” she said. “I put all that rich and wonderful stuff in my usual pea soup and you don't like it. I use just one plain ingredient and you love it.”
“Yeah, but it's the one right ingredient,” I said. I slurped down the last of my third bowl of soup, grabbed my wool mackinaw, jammed my cowboy hat on my head and rushed out the door. I was on my way to house church at Canim Lake.
Late that night found me on the road going the other direction. What with the snow, ice, and moose on the road, the trip was slow, which compelled me to take a couple of hours to do some thinking. Christmas was on my mind. It's such a busy season and I was muttering to myself about all the goings-on I had to get going-on. That's when I realized that for me, a good Christmas is like pea soup. For me, a good Christmas is one where all the usual rich and complex stuff is left out and the one right ingredient is used. As far as I am concerned, you can leave out all the wonderful presents and gourmet meals and lavish parties and family gatherings and bustling stores and Christmas jingles and (dare I say it) church socials and concerts. For me, Christmas usually surprises me each year on Christmas Eve as I read the Christmas story about the birth of Jesus. The birth of Jesus is the one right ingredient for making a good Christmas. Throw in a little worship to kick it up a notch, and as far as I am concerned you have made a perfect Christmas!
My pea soup philosophy about Christmas was heavy on my mind when it suddenly struck me as I drove, that the original Christmas story is like good pea soup too. Biblical and historical studies reveal that the first Christmas happened in the midst of a world and society that was filled with many ingredients. There were the complexities of the extravagant goings-on of Herod the Great and his following, the Roman occupying forces and their following, and the Temple cult and their following. People were buying and selling and partying and eating and over-consuming. And other camps of people were impoverished and oppressed and their lives were extremely consumed with the busy struggle just to survive. Others, a much smaller group, were hiding out in the desert with hectic resolve to ignore the whole damned busy thing. And into the midst of all the business of lavish consumption and the struggle to eke out an existence and the hectic resolve to maintain a desert spiritual superiority, one single, simple thing happened: A very young woman and her husband, homeless in a strange village, birthed a son in a delivery room with a sheep dung floor and a feeding trough nursery. That one single simple thing was the sole ingredient that made the first Christmas. Hallelujah!
It strikes me that Christmas is, and always has been, about paradoxical juxtapositions. Paradoxical juxtapositions serve to amplify. It's like two versions of pea soup placed side by side, with one version's simple succulent superiority amplified by the other version's complex, corpulent coarseness. Maybe it's a good thing that Christmas happens each year in the midst of all the busy consumptive rush, on just about every level, much of it smacking of religiosity. Suddenly placed right beside all of this, a wee babe is born in waxy nakedness and God says: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” (Mark 9:7)
