The Four Key Purim Mitzvot

For some key Purim terms, see https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/purim-glossary/

Other Purim Customs
In addition to the festive meal, gifts to the poor, and gifts to friends, the fourth obligation of Purim is to hear the Book of Esther (the Megillah) recited both in the evening and the morning of Purim. It's customary to use noise makers to "blot out the name of Haman" -see
https://www.chabad.org/holidays/purim/article_cdo/aid/4321929/jewish/The-Origins-of-the-Gragger-Why-We-Boo-Haman.htm#footnote1a4321929
In Reform Jewish communities, observance of Purim Carnivals and eating of hamentaschen became the most known and memorable way to observe Purim.
In other communities, the Purim Spiel is what brought connection to the holiday.
https://reformjudaism.org/jewish-holidays/purim/fascinating-evolution-purim-spiel
For Discussion:
Which of the mitzvoth or customs resonate for you?
Which do you look forward to practicing?

Or haEmet
Become drunk with Purim's love, and then you can lift up everything to G-d – even the corporeal world, which also comes from G-d. This is what it means: everything is equal before you, and thus you can serve G-d even through the cursed...Haman, representing the physical realm.

Rabbi Sharon Brous, for American Jewish World Service
https://ajws.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/cc_purim_5771.pdf
The reversibility of fortune, the capriciousness of life, is a message Purim shares with Yom Kippur. Known in the Talmud as yom k’purim, “a day like Purim,” Yom Kippur compels us to reflect on the unavoidable uncertainty of our lives. But on Yom Kippur we dive into this terrifying reality with austerity, reflection and spiritual wakefulness, whereas on Purim we respond by celebrating, imbibing and masquerading.
Our Rabbis teach that on Purim we are to ply ourselves with wine, drinking ad d’lo yada—until we can no longer tell the difference between "Cursed be Haman" and "Blessed be Mordecai." We wear costumes that simultaneously mask who we are and reveal the part of ourselves we work all year to hide. We eat, drink, dance and laugh in the face of our darkest fears—the possibility that human life and human history can change on a dime, that everything we know to be true could be a farce, that everything we love might disappear in an instant, that there is more chaos than order in the world. It is an exercise in radical spiritual destabilization. And the response is the closest Jews come to carpe diem—one day a year when our otherwise exacting tradition understands that sometimes drunken revelry is the only reasonable response to desperate vulnerability.
Yet Purim is more than a day of rowdy gluttony. It also dictates acts of generosity and community: “Make them days of feasting and gladness and of mishloah manot (sending portions of food) one to another, and matanot l’evyonim (gifts to the poor).” We embrace the confusion and moral ambiguity of Purim with a renewed commitment to social transformation, responding to the mess of life by giving our family and friends sweet gifts and by giving generously to the poor. In other words, the only way to make sense of the absurd randomness of life and the social order is to honor the loving relationships that sustain us and work to address the imbalance of fortunes that leaves some with abundance and others with nothing. Mishloah manot and matanot l’evyonim come to reinforce that while we cannot control the world, we can control the way we live in it.
Remarkably, we learn regarding matanot l'evyonim that, "We [should not be] exceedingly precautious with money on Purim. Rather, we give to everyone who puts out a hand." Today is not the day for discernment or judgment. Give, regardless of what you fear he might do with the money. Give, not because you have determined that she deserves, but because she has asked.
This mitzvah acknowledges our lack of control over our destinies: Give generously today, for tomorrow it could be you begging for a little spare change. Give because you know in your heart that it is only an accident of history that you are here and the poor are there. Give because it would be intellectually and morally corrupt to tell the story of our people’s miraculous triumph, to celebrate history’s reversibility, without sharing our bounty with those who sit now on the other side of fortune.
So Purim is simultaneously an acknowledgment of life’s meaninglessness and unpredictability and a wholehearted last-ditch effort to pierce the chaos and shatter the darkness. “There is no greater or more wonderful joy,” says the Mishnah Berurah, “than to make happy the heart of a poor person, an orphan or a widow. This is how we become God-like.” Even from the heart of darkness, we refuse to cede agency. We make up for God’s absence in the Purim narrative by redoubling our capacity for God-like living in our own. We respond to the threat of emptiness by pouring more kindness and sweetness into the world.