A Final Word 
by Connie WIllis

The giving (and getting) of gifts is inextricably bound up with Christmas and the Christmas story—from the Magis' gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the partridge in the pear tree, from the turkey "bigger than a boy" that the formerly stingy Scrooge sends the Cratchits to the small bottle of cologne the still-stingy Amy buys for Marmee so she'll have enough money to buy some drawing pencils. From heart's desires like Ralphie's "Red Ryder repeating carbine with a compass mounted in the stock" and Susan's "a real house," to the more symbolic, like Amahl's crutch and the ham the Herdmans brought the Holy Family.
So it seemed fitting to end this book by giving some sort of gift. This is easier said than done. I can't get you a BB gun. You'd shoot your eye out. And I don't know what size you wear or what color you like, whether you have long hair or have sold it to buy a watch fob or the money for a train ticket for Marmee. I don't know anything about you, really, except that you like reading Christmas stories.
When I was a kid, one of my chief joys was finding a wonderful new book or author, especially if the place I found it was in the pages of a book. When the little women read The Pickwick Papers, and played Pilgrim's Progress, it was as if Jo was personally recommending them to me.
Kip's father in Robert A. Heinlein's Have Space Suit Will Travel wasn't listening to Kip, because he was reading Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, and the three men in the boat were singing Gilbert and Sullivan. Anne of Green Gables acted out "The Lady of Shalott" by Tennyson, who wrote "Le Morte d'Arthur," which led me to T. H. White's The Once and Future King, which was right next to Charles Williams's All Hallow's Eve on the library bookshelf, and Williams had been friends with J. R. R. Tolkien, who led me to Middle Earth, which led me to ...
I've plugged some favorites in these stories—A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett in "Adaptation," Miracle on 34th Street in "Miracle"—but there are lots of Christmas stories and movies I couldn't manage to fit in, stories and movies I love and that my family reads out loud and watches together every Christmas.
So it seems like a perfect Christmas present to introduce you to them, the way Anne Shirley introduced me to Ben Hur and Kip Russell introduced me to The Tempest.
So here they are, twelve of them, in honor of the Twelve Days of Christmas, Twelfth Night, and Epiphany.
Merry Christmas!