Through the years, the late Marilyn Beck and I asked a wide range of celebrities for their most indelible holiday memories, good or bad — and got a great mixed gift bag full of responses. Just like the rest of us, some of the stars have discovered that less-than-perfect circumstances can lead to some of the best holidays and that when it comes right down to it, the very best gifts don't come in a box.

Jeff Daniels: "I was shooting a movie once — I think it was 'Marie' in Tennessee back in the early '80s — and it was early in our marriage. My wife, Kathleen, flew home to Michigan, and I told her that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get home in time for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. I was hoping to fly in for Christmas Day. Here she was with her young husband gone and, you know, we're going to spend Christmas without each other. 'Go home to your family. Be with family,' I said. 'It's more likely I'll see you on the 26th.' She was completely depressed about it. Her favorite Christmas song at the time was 'Joy to the World.' So, she goes home and she's at her mother's house, celebrating Christmas Eve with her huge extended family. And all of a sudden, she hears this voice out on the porch singing 'Joy to the World.' Me. I was planning it all along. There was a period in my life I was terribly romantic."

Neil Patrick Harris: "I grew up in a small ski resort town in New Mexico (Ruidoso), so Christmas was climate-dependent. My favorite memories are of waking up to an incredibly white Christmas — snow everywhere, building a fire, staying together with the family because you had no other option."

Sarah Jessica Parker: "I have a really large family, and like every family, it has its own eccentricities. As a child, we would always have an undecorated tree, and when we woke up, the whole tree would be decorated, and there would be presents, and we believed Santa did all that."

Hilary Duff: "One Christmas particularly stands out. When I was 6 or 7, we got snowed in at our ranch in Texas — my mom, dad, sister and grandmother. We couldn't even cook, so we had Christmas dinner out of hors d'oeuvres. It was so much fun."

Eddie Griffin said he would never forget the Christmas he was seeing nothing but green. "When I was young, I got a bag of plastic green army men," recalls the comic-cum-actor. "I didn't get all of them. I just got that one pose!" Meanwhile, he said, "my brothers and them got bikes and s—-, and all I had was these little green army men. I thought that was it. Then my grandmother surprised me and brought me out a brand-new bike. That was cool."

Howie Mandel: "Somebody gave me this dreidel, and it was made out of clay, and I played with it before it was dry and ready, and it was a disaster."

Patrick Warburton said his favorite family Christmas was spent "in a cabin in Oregon on the Rogue River, not far from Snow Valley." He continued: "We got a Christmas tree permit to go up to the woods and get your own Christmas tree, so we drove up in the old army truck with my children and cut down a tree and slid it into the cabin. It was just fun to have a real kind of mountain Christmas. That was about three years ago, and it was a really special time. It's beautiful up there. The Rogue River is one of those stunning American rivers. It's rural and ... one of only six rivers in America protected by specific laws."

Naomi Judd: "Wynonna and Ashley and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Marin County, California, while I was putting myself through nursing school, and we didn't have anything. It was so hard on me emotionally to be away from Ashland, Kentucky, and my mom and the house I was born in, but we didn't have any money to get home, so it was just the three of us. Wy was 14, and Ashley was 10. We had just a small turkey breast for dinner. The girls were very sad and quiet. But then I started this thing, asking them about their favorite memories. They both have such rich, vivid imaginations they began acting them out, and the mood was transformed. It started a tradition."

Daryl Hannah's most memorable holiday? "(It) would have to be when I was like 7 years old at Christmas. I ran down the stairs, and my parents had one of those things that are sort of like a fabric tunnel at the bottom of our stairs. They always had ribbon at the top of the stairs so we couldn't go down till our parents woke up. Then they'd cut the ribbon, and we'd all race down. It looked like there was a veritable Santa's toyshop under the tree, and we had to go through the tunnel in order to get to the living room. Seven is a pretty great age for Christmas anyway, and it was also snowing. It was, like, really exciting."

Mark-Paul Gosselaar: "I was the youngest of all my brothers and sisters, so I usually had great Christmases. My siblings are quite a few years older than me, so I would get a lot of presents and I was spoiled."

Lou Diamond Phillips told us he's into making every Christmas unforgettable. "There's a line from a Rickie Lee Jones song that goes, 'You never know when you're making a memory.' The first time I listened to that, I told myself I will always know when I'm making a memory."

Debbie Allen: "I remember the Christmas when Phylicia (Rashad, her sister) and I were struggling artists in New York. We had a can of tuna fish between us and our cat; forget even thinking about a turkey. We promised each other we wouldn't worry about Christmas gifts. We just wanted our parents to think we were doing well. I remember us being in a phone booth, telling tales to our dad — 'We're having the best time' — because we were determined to make it and we didn't want them to know how struggling we were and to say, 'Come home.' Anyway, I don't know how I did it, but somehow I scraped enough money together to buy her a pair of earrings. Then it turned out she bought me a pair of earrings, as well. I still have them."

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