Wintry reads.

The sunrise this morning was a wintry purple and magenta, and now it is snowing. Here we are in the middle of Hanukkah, the day before Christmas Eve, and it is finally starting to feel like December.

Long nights by the fire (if you can have a fire; we can't, anymore, because the sparks and snapping logs startle our old dog) are just made for books, and late December--a time of tradition and sentiment--is made for re-reading old favorites.

Here are my top five holiday reads. It's not an exotic list, but a familiar one, because, of course, it's Christmas. Exotic comes with the New Year.

5. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," by Dr. Seuss. Sure, you can watch it on TV--I always do. But you can also snuggle with your child (or borrow a grandchild or a niece or nephew) and read it aloud, making all the growling sounds, and the gasps, and then finish with song.

4. "A Christmas Memory," by Truman Capote. Because every Christmas story needs darkness. And it doesn't hurt to throw in a few fruitcakes.

3."A Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens. Of course. Plum pudding and holly and little lame children and Scrooge-like bosses--oh, wait, he's not Scrooge-like; he is Scrooge! And middle of the night angst and joy cometh in the morning.

2. "Little Women," by Louisa May Alcott. From the opening line-- "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug--this book is steeped in family, giving, holidays, selfishness and selflessness. The scene where Amy returns the small bottle of perfume for a larger one is the spirit of the holiday, right there: that brief, virtuous but entirely sincere moment when, once again, we manage to overcome greed and truly give.

1. "A Child's Christmas in Wales," by Dylan Thomas. "One Christmas was so much like the other in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six." Mrs. Prothero and the firemen, the raspy wheezy eggshell voice, breakfast under the balloons...

Thomas' images of a Welsh Christmas are so vivid and so familiar that if you read it more than once you will begin to think he is writing about you, and your childhood. And if you read it more than five times, you will begin to think that you wrote it.

Your turn. What are your favorite books to read this time of year?