WORDS AND IMAGES : Hanukkah Stories : With the Festival of Lights beginning Saturday, stores are stocking holiday books, videos and games galore.

It’s the season of lights. Hanukkah and Christmas. Our houses and streets are glowing with color. We string the Christmas trees and light the candle in the Menorah. This year Hanukkah begins on Saturday night and bookstores have stocked a variety of books, games and videos about the Jewish Festival of Lights. (You’ll notice the different spellings of Hanukkah throughout the story.)

Adventures for Kids bookstore is featuring Tommy de Paola’s “My First Chanukah” and a book about a little bear, “Beni’s First Chanukah.” Other titles available are “The Chanukkah Guest” and “Family Hanukkah.” They also recommend “Celebrations, The Book of Jewish Festivals” edited by Naomi Black. Kideos, the video store next door, is featuring a Sesame Street Chanukah video starring Joan Rivers and Alan King interacting with the Muppets, and “Chanaka at Bubbe’s,” a Muppet puppet production. Both stores are located at 3457 Telegraph Road, Ventura.

The Ventura Bookstore, 522 E. Main St., carries 50 different titles relating to Jewish history, holidays and culture. The list includes “One Minute Jewish Stories” by Shari Lewis, “Stencils for Hanukkah” and “The Glass Menorah,” as well as Jewish calendars. They also recommend “The Other 1492: Jewish Settlement in the New World.”

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Waldenbooks in The Oaks Shopping Center, 564 Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks, will host two authors. Friday at 10 a.m., Tom McNamara will autograph “Henry Lunt & the Ranger” a novel about espionage during the American Revolution . . . Saturday at 2 p.m., prolific fantasy author Mercedes Lackey will sign her latest novel “Winds of Change.”

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Tuesday at 7 p.m., staff members at the Prueter Library in Port Hueneme will read a well-loved Christmas story and host other activities for children . . . And Wednesday at 10 a.m., a short film, “How Animals Discovered Christmas,” will be shown at the library.

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Jonathan Winters performs his unique rendition of Charles Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” at 12:30 p.m., Wednesday on KCRW-FM (89.1). Probably our foremost comic raconteur, Winters (a Montecito resident) reads all the male roles. Actress Mimi Kennedy does the female roles. The radio script is based on the version Dickens wrote for his public readings.

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Leah Pickman, a Westlake Village party designer, teamed up with her three sisters--Jackie Knazan of Vancouver, Canada; Renee Kaufman of Los Angeles and Terri Rosen of Kansas--to write and publish “The Party Wizard.” The illustrated, user-friendly format suggests and then details how to host parties--from the traditional to the off-the-wall celebrations.

One suggestion is to ring in the New Year by phoning (at midnight) friends you haven’t spoken to in 10 years and ask how things are going. Could get a bit dicey. How to get a copy of “The Party Wizard?” Call Leah Pickman at 497-0473.