Let me say at the outset that I have never watched Oprah Winfrey. There's no particular reason; I've never watched any of the daytime talk shows.

But suddenly Oprah Winfrey is making big waves in the world of libraries.

It seems that Ms. Winfrey, an astute and avid reader, has launched a once-a-month "Oprah's Book Club." The results are astonishing.

I don't know if it's the weather, or that it's January and so the new year. But about every twelve months I get a strong urge to cook up a batch of bean soup. And when I get the urge, I call my dad for the recipe.

It's not that I can't, or haven't, written it down. But somehow the phone call is one of the ingredients that makes for good soup. "About half an hour before it's done," my dad says, "add about half a cup of ketchup."

"Ketchup!" I always say, wondering. "Why ketchup?"

"For color," he says.

On Christmas Day, at 2 o'clock in the morning, my 9-year-old daughter woke me up to say "Merry Christmas!" I had at that point been in bed for a solid, restful stretch of almost 45 minutes. But with true Christmas spirit, I responded, "Go back to sleep!"

Maddy vibrated with anticipation for another four hours. (We could feel her bed shake through the floor boards.) Eventually, she did get us all assembled before the glittering tree with its mounds of gifts.

Whatever your religious background, you probably find something in the Christmas season that speaks to you. To the Druids (from whom we get the Christmas tree), it was the winter solstice -- the idea of the "evergreen," a life that sustained itself through the cold, but reveled in the seasons of the sun and the promise of warmth to come.