Putting aside the obvious and very traditional, what literary work do you urge to be read aloud on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day? Why?

Clarinda Harriss is chair of the Towson University English Department. She has published three collections of poetry and contributed to scholarly works on poetry. Her work appears in many magazines. She edits and directs BrickHouse Books Inc., Maryland's oldest continuously publishing small press.

"The Cherry Tree Carol" -- an anonymous song, medieval, alive and well in Appalachia and audible on any number of bluegrass or roots recordings. Donkey-borne Mary gets a craving for cherries (in midwinter, of course); Joseph, footsore, weary and more than a little testy from the whole paternity situation, loses it for a moment and tells Mary, "Let the father of the baby gather cherries for thee," and hey the Father gives him a good comeuppance (the trees bow down so Mary doesn't even have to reach up). Now here comes the best part: The last stanza ends, "And Mary gathered cherries while Joseph stood around." Pretty much sums up a guy's sense of cosmic uselessness while his consort is having a baby; you don't have to belong to any particular religion, or even be religious, to appreciate it.

Terry Teachout is the author of The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken, just out from HarperCollins.

Were I to find myself at a very literary party, I'd read a story from Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland, in which the best of all possible parodists imagines how an assortment of famous and once-famous authors might have written about Christmas.

The funniest piece in the book is "P.C., X, 36," by "R*d**rd K*pl*ng," the tender tale of how two over-zealous bobbies caught Santa Claus climbing out of a chimney on Christmas Eve and hustled him off to the station house: "It's my dooty ter caution yer that wotever yer say now maybe used in hevidence against yer, yer old sinner. Pick up that there sack, an' come along o' me." I love Kipling, but Beerbohm had a pitch-perfect ear for his various flaws, and "P.C., X, 36" nails them all with eerie skill.

Paul Duke is a senior commentator for public broadcasting and a veteran political reporter. He began his career as an Associated Press writer and later was congressional correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and NBC. For 20 years, he was moderator of PBS' Washington Week in Review. He recently received the John Chancellor award for lifetime journalistic excellence.

My offering for a favorite Christmas reading of a literary work is The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, a truly lovely tale that dramatizes the holiday spirit. This is what I would say: This is a story that warms the holiday heart because it demonstrates a struggling young couple's deep devotion to one another. In a touching act of sacrificial love, and unbeknownst to the other, each gives up a treasured possession to make the other happy.

Tess Lewis has published translations from French and German and writes essays for The Hudson Review and The New Criterion. She has a master's degree in English literature from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes scholar.

As an antidote to too many Hallmark cards and a reminder that changes of heart can begin anywhere, I recommend "Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all" from W. H. Auden's first book, Poems (1930). It is also listed as #7 in the Vintage Selected Poems. Here it is, in full:

Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all

But will his negative inversion, be prodigal:

Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch

Curing the intolerable neural itch,

The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy, And the distortions of ingrown virginity.

Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response

And gradually correct the coward's stance;

Cover in time with beams those in retreat

That, spotted, they turn though the reverse were great;

Publish each healer that in city lives

Or country houses at the end of drives;

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

Steve Proctor is The Sun's deputy managing editor for features and sports.

Stories that beg to be read aloud on Christmas Eve -- beyond the tried and true -- are rare finds, but the tiny Nautical & Aviation Publishing Co. delivers one with Howard Bahr's Home for Christmas. This little gem was published in 1997, the same year Bahr made a sensation with his debut novel The Black Flower. In 49 pages of lush, lyrical prose it tells the story of two children orphaned by the Civil War and their emotional journey to understanding what it means to be home for the holidays.

Ken Fuson is a former staff writer for The Sun, and has been a reporter for more than 20 years. He now works at The Des Moines Register.

That Terrible Night Santa Got Lost in the Woods, by Larry L. King. A Depression-era father gets caught in a dreadful blizzard while walking home with presents for his 4-year-old son. It's a story of parental devotion and the lengths parents will go during the holidays (remember Cabbage Patch dolls?) to keep an illusion alive. Sweet, sentimental and often funny, this is perfect for reading around a crackling Christmas Eve fireplace.

Craig Nova is the author of 10 novels, including The Good Son, Tornado Alley and Wetware, which was published last January. His Brook Trout and the Writing Life was published in 1999. He is at work on a new book and on a screen adaptation of The Good Son.

This is an exceedingly hard question to consider, since Christmas has ceased to be a religious holiday and is now a matter of celebrating our attachment to each other rather than our attachment to God. And, for this endeavor, I would suggest reading any of the chapters that describe Christmas in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, such as The Long Winter. These are stories of exquisite dignity, which reveal how much can be revealed by the gift of a very small thing.

I forgot to add that on Boxing Day I would suggest reading Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, by George W. Peck.

Victoria A. Brownworth is a descendant of Clement C. Moore, who many believe wrote the inimitable 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Though there is no Christmas tale among the many books and essays she has written, she is known to her friends as Mrs. Claus. Each Christmas she gives books to a single elementary school class in her own poverty-stricken Philadelphia neighborhood. She teaches writing and film for the University of the Arts.

I love reading Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales and Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory. Each evokes a dynamically different perspective on Christmas, but each is uniquely true to the experience of Christmas as a child. I adore Thomas' warmth and conviviality, but the bittersweetness of Capote is heartbreaking. These two works explain Christmas even more fully than O. Henry or Dickens. Each never fails to move me -- like the Whos down in Whoville, I like Christmas a lot, but I know its expectations are rarely met. Eschew these treasures if Christmas sentiment seems too much like humbug to you, and go straight to David Sedaris. He puts Christmas in a whole new but not so lovely light.

John McIntyre is The Sun's assistant managing editor for the copy desk and a communicant of Memorial Episcopal Church in Bolton Hill.

The lections for the day appointed in the Book of Common Prayer: Isaiah 9 ("The people that walked in darkness") and Luke 2 ("... there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus") or John 1 ("In the beginning was the Word"), preferably, for this day, in the Authorized Version. Yes, these are traditional texts, but if we don't uphold traditions on Christmas, when will we?