Here's our third annual series presenting holiday memories from some of your favorite children's authors and illustrators. Share your holiday memories with SLJ on Twitter, using the hashtag #HolidayMemory.

Emily Jenkins

My parents divorced when I was two, and I am my mother's only child. On Christmas Eve she and I used to go a friend's house out in Arlington, MA. There was a tree that reached the ceiling decorated with lit candles, and they always served tiny chocolates decorated with white sprinkles like snow. We caroled around the tree and the adults got tipsy, and I played with a three-dimensional tic-tac-toe game when I got bored. There were never any other children there. Later, there were a couple years my mother threw holiday parties of her own. I remember she made egg nog with heavy cream and brandy; I was allowed to drink some. She served it in a cut-crystal mug. Most years, she took me to The Nutcracker. She saved her wrapping paper and wrapped every single item in my stocking, which was packed to bursting with special candies, tiny ceramic animals, and—later—lip glosses and glitter eyeshadow. I recall the first time I spent part of the holiday at a boyfriend's house, and being amazed that other people celebrated differently than we did in our family of two. My boyfriend's family ran around the house Christmas Eve stuffing unwanted and ridiculous junk into one another's stockings in full view. They gave me a stocking of silly crap, too. I have never stopped being interested in that kind of moment: when we glimpse other people's intimate rituals, when they let us into them—and change us in doing so.

Jeff Kinney

My childhood Christmas memories have congealed into one giant fruitcake of a thing; the highlights (and the lowlights!) all baked together in my mind. It's hard for me to remember the particulars of one single Christmas, but certain moments do burn brightly. There was the time that my brother, my sister, and I snuck downstairs at 3:00 a.m. to get a sneak preview of our presents, only to be caught red-handed by my father. There was the time that the gifts overflowed from beneath the Christmas tree and quite nearly covered the living room floor. Once, my folks ran out of time for wrapping gifts, so my brother and I took turns closing our eyes and drawing unwrapped gifts from a black garbage bag. Another time, my dog greeted my grandparents by pooping on the floor just as they walked in the house. The great controversy each year was who got "The Corner" in the living room… that is to say, the area behind the yellow couch that was ideal for stockpiling gifts. Each year, arguments over who got The Corner were settled by consulting the photo album from the Christmas prior. Whenever I was the benefactor of The Corner, my gifts would pile up to the point of capacity. But one year, it all changed. I was about 15… ancient, in Christmas years… and my take was quite small. In fact, my gifts barely came up to my ankles. The coup de grace came when I opened my gifts: Clothes. The party was over for me, but no matter. I'd had my fill. It was time to make sure the next generation was enjoying their Christmases, and baking fruitcakes of memories of their own.

Photo: Dion Ogust

Ann M. Martin

When my sister and I were growing up, my parents, especially my father, made Christmas not only joyous but magical. We made tree ornaments together, an activity my father enjoyed as much as Jane and I did. We wrapped gifts together and decorated the house together and delivered presents to the neighbors together. With my mother, we baked cookies and fruitcakes (the good kind, not the kind people use as doorstops or to hold down the lids of their garbage cans). And then there was the subject of Santa Claus. My father told my sister and me that the best way to get a letter to Santa was to send it up the chimney. It would, he said, sail right up the chimney (that Santa came DOWN this same chimney on Christmas Eve was not lost on us), and then through the night sky (this was a project best done after dark) to the North Pole where an elf would catch it and see that it made its way into Santa's hands. So every year, until we were too old for such things, Jane and I eagerly wrote our letters to Santa and then with great ceremony—and help from my father—leaned into the hearth, held our letters gingerly over the flames, let go of them quickly, and watched as they whooshed up the chimney. As soon as they were out of sight we ran outside into the dark hoping to see them on the next part of their journey, looping and flapping over the rooftops on their way to the North Pole. The fact that we never did see them did nothing to dampen our belief in the magic. We knew the letters would soon be in Santa's hands. Cut to 30 years later. I am now an adult, living in my own house, with its own chimney, and every bit as enchanted by Christmas as I was when I was a child. One December, friends of mine came for a visit with their two young children. After a day of making ornaments and gingerbread houses and being as Christmasy as possible, I suggested to the children, who seemed to be growing a bit tired of all the Christmasyness, that they write letters to Santa Claus. I would, I said, show them the best way to send them to Santa, which was also the magic way. So the children sat down and dutifully wrote their letters. They hadn't had much time to plan the letters, which I tried to overlook (so excited was I to recreate my father's magic), but they did their best, and when the letters were finished I told the older child to hold her letter over the flames and see what happened when she let go. She obeyed, let go of the letter, and it fell onto the hearth. "Try again," I said, picking it up for her. The same thing happened. Then the younger child gave it a shot. His letter fell nearer to the fire and one corner was singed off. I rescued it before it could go up in flames. The children now looked very skeptical, so I said that if they went into the kitchen the Christmas cookies were probably ready. As soon as they were gone I tried to ram the letters up the chimney with a poker. The letters fell down again and this time landed in the flames, turning to ashes in a matter of seconds. The children returned to the living room. "Your letters are gone!" I said brightly, gesturing to the chimney. The children were eating cookies, and now looked even more skeptical, and certainly didn't ask to run outside to see their letters in the sky. What had happened to the magic? Why wouldn't the letters sail up the chimney? They had done so nicely when I was six. Hadn't they? Well, maybe they hadn't. In my family I'm frequently accused of remembering things, both good and bad, that didn't actually happen. But it's nice to remember Christmas magic and to believe in it. Which may be why I so enjoy writing about Christmas, and trying, at least in fiction, to recreate the magic that was so much a part of my childhood holiday celebrations. Patricia Reilly Giff Snow reminds me of the Christmas without my dad. He had been there, smiling with my mother, as my sister and I unwrapped the books and the games, and exclaimed over the new sled. The whole week was ahead of us: Dad to take us sledding, to read to us, the four of us to sit around the table playing Rook. But then came the blizzard. My father, a police captain, had to return to the city to work. The trees and bushes became mounds of white; our front door was covered. Mom made cookies with us and played games, but we wanted Dad to pull us on the sled, and to read the new books, which we wouldn't open without him. At last he came up the walk. "Now we're together," Mom said, tears glinting in her eyes, "that's when Christmas begins." For so many years, my husband, a detective, had to work on Christmas Day. Once my son Jim was in the hospital, coming home days later. And there was the time my son Bill and his family came from Australia in January. But always, my mother's thoughts echo in my mind, and I tell my family, "When we're together, Christmas begins." How comforting, and true.