Oprah's Sumptuous Christmas Party

Beneath the flicker of 12 dancing flames from the chandelier, dinner is punctuated with the sounds of celebration: Katy Rose's giggle, the clickety-clack of silver against china, Johnny Mathis crooning "Christmas Is a Feeling in Your Heart" in the background. Stedman carves the bird. I lift my glass for a wine toast: Gayle, the consummate abstainer who would ask a bartender for a hit of milk, of course declines. What she will partake of is the irresistible dessert: The fluffy coconut cake looks like it has floated right down from heaven and onto our plates. Later in the living room, where crystal ornaments hang in the windows and the blue spruce towers more than ten feet into the air, Art serves up one of his grandma's old-time Southern recipes: a vanilla-fudge-like candy called divinity.

As a child, I always dreamed of the ideal Christmas: bows of holly on the staircase, mistletoe in all the doorways, snowman in the yard, elf dolls in every corner. In all my years of growing up, I'd never even had a real tree—and our fake one was only 3 feet high, dressed with one of those colored-light twirls. So for the first time, back in 1989, I gave myself all that I'd thought I wanted—starting with an ornament party, since I had not one single ornament to my name. As I sit with friends in front of a fireplace now, surrounded by more ornaments than I ever thought I'd own, I remember what I realized more than a decade ago: Christmas can't be found on a tree or in a package. It comes with the rich connections we make with those around us and with the nurturing we extend to ourselves and others—those are the gifts that count. Johnny Mathis had it right: Christmas is a feeling in your heart. And whether you're commemorating Chanukah, Kwanza, or December 25, the celebration is meaningful only if the spirit of the day lives strong in you all year round.

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