The new year lumbers in accompanied by dark skies and rain. In a world so messy and muddled, I become thoughtful. Today we live with weather disasters and cultural conflict. We are required to acknowledge countless profound and ordinary examples of man’s inhumanity to man, around the world and close to home. Still, I am again heartened by a look back at December and the Christmas holidays, where hints of magic can sometimes tiptoe into our lives.

I am lucky that even as grandparents, my husband and I celebrate this exalted holiday of our Christian faith with children and grandchildren. This year, everyone — two daughters, their spouses, three grandkids, and one “significant other” — gathered for a few festive days here in Vermont. We were lucky with the weather, having enough snow for sledding and even for some cross-country skiing. Most important, we were lucky in being together to celebrate the habits and rituals that have come to identify us as a family.

Attending church on Christmas Eve is taken for granted. Perhaps it’s that hearing the lessons and singing the carols helps turn down the sounds of the larger world, or that it calls us to be more quiet. Perhaps we contemplate the oddity, if not the magnitude, of a random baby being born in someone else’s stable, centuries ago in a foreign country, and causing such a stir.

When we return home to our own less mysterious traditions, we find ourselves seated together around the table for an intimate, candle-lit dinner of oyster stew. When we have run out of conversation and finished the last of the iced Christmas tree cookies, everyone is shooed off to bed — except for my daughters and me. We three have “elfing” to do. Stockings to fill with small treasures collected throughout the fall. And we have final arrangements to make of the enticing presents under the tree that will greet us on Christmas Day morning.

By this time in our history, we have simplified gift-giving by drawing names. Through that process, we identify one person in particular, “our person,” to whom we give a single, larger item. Sometimes it sparks a lovely, special connection that can last far into the future. You can imagine my delight this year when a grandson gave me the somewhat costly present of a summer gift certificate to an organic farm that raises not only vegetables and meat but also seasonal flowers. I have a lot to look forward to, including colorful sweet peas and golden sunflowers.

But what I want to say most emphatically about Christmas and Christmas magic, is that for me personally, it has so very much to do with books. From the time our children were babies, there were books under the tree for them to unwrap, handle and chew on, and begin to love. The enticing drawings in Ezra Jack Keats’s “The Snowy Day” and later, the enchanting woodcuts of Vermont artist Mary Azarian remain vibrant for us all.

And from the time that we have had grandchildren and have gotten together for Christmas, I have exempted myself from the limits of just the stocking stuffers and a larger gift for my special person. Being the matriarch and a reader, I do what I want to do, which is to also give a book to each person in the family.

As comforting as this ritual has become, this year, after a late November Thanksgiving, I was uncommonly uncertain. Have I worn out this legacy of giving everyone a holiday book, a habit that I had taken such pleasure in over the years? Should I just encourage them all to buy a book of their own choosing? Would a bookstore gift certificate be preferable? Behind this doubt, I now see, was the worry that even though I read enthusiastically and keenly, I might, at my age, be out of touch with the right choices for younger readers.

I am exceedingly grateful to the author whose book I was reading when, on that cold December evening, doubts assailed me. Susan Hand Shetterly, who wrote “Notes on the Landscape of Home,” brought me to my senses. A Maine writer herself, Shetterly was reflecting on her fellow Mainer, E.B. White. Driving by White’s home in North Brooklin, Maine, she had made the snap decision to re-read “Charlotte’s Web.” “Language connects people to each other,” she went on to muse. “It helps them identify who they are, and offers them a way to explain the world and their place in it.”

Of course it does, I exclaimed to myself! Relieved, even excited, I too made a snap decision, on which I commented in the morning as I sat with my notebook: “Last night I finally again committed to purchasing books for everyone for Christmas. How close I came to giving up. But as I read Shetterly, I realized that not giving books is not a choice. I give books because I believe in them and I trust in language. In uncountable ways books — and writers — enhance our lives, even though it might be different for each of us at our different ages.”

My list of specific books follows. These are in addition to the Shetterly and E. B. White selections mentioned above. Each one was chosen with care, with the hope it would be at least a good enough choice for the cherished recipient. Included were: “The Mighty Red,” by Louise Erdrich; “Underland,” by Robert MacFarlane; “Water, Water,” by Billy Collins; “Gather,” by Ken Cadow; “Small Things Like These,” by Claire Keegan; and “The Message,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

My local bookstore, as usual, aided and abetted. With each trip I made there, I recognized a welcome and restored sense of agency and pleasure. I felt joyous on Christmas morning when the book packages were opened. My happiness was complete when I was handed two beautifully wrapped gifts of my own, certainly and unmistakably, books.

Whoever else we are and are becoming, as part of this family, we are readers. In the face of life’s meanness, we rely on the joys, the challenges, the wisdom of books. And if we’re lucky, we are inspired by their magic.

Mary Otto is a former longtime Norwich resident. She lives in Shelburne, Vt.