Sipherd Christmas collection will touch readers’ hearts

THE CHRISTMAS STORE, by Ray Sipherd, St. Martin’s Press, 214 pages, $17.95.

In this charming collection of 12 stories the charisma of Christmas alters the lives of ordinary people — shoppers and employees — in a large department store during the pre-Christmas crush. The tales are told by an elegant, mysterious store floorwalker who from the day after Thanksgiving to the night before Christmas moves through the aisles, at the ready to be helpful, all the while his bright, blue eyes bear witness to, and record in his mind, the human dramas swirling around him.

Bright as holly berries, his tales evoke happy memories in the reader. A few, however, call up tears; others, such as “The Twelve Shopping Days of Christmas,” elicit growing amusement as one gets into the droll developments that arise when an earnest young woman, hired by the store to work in the Personal Shopper’s Service department during the pre-Christmas season, is assigned to carry out the written requests of a male customer that a series of difficult-to-find gifts be delivered to his fiancee, one at a time, over the period of the 12 days preceding Christmas. In a do-or-die spirit she accepts the challenge. As the exchange of letters between her and the male client proliferates, the reader begins to suspect that something is in the wind when her first formal signature, “Respectfully, Ms sic Chase,” eventually segues

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into “Cha cha cha, Melanie.”

Arnold Wembley’s drama unfolds in a less merry manner. In “A Miracle for Max,” the balding, middle-aged actor takes refuge in the basement of the department store out of fear. Broke, unable to find acting work just before Christmas, and desperate for money to buy gifts for his adored nieces and nephews, he rents a Santa Claus suit and botches his attempt to hold up a bank for the sum he needs.

Bolting to the safety of the nearby department store basement, he is surprised to find that someone else has taken sanctuary there. It is Max, a little girl of about 7, who lives at a home for orphans and runaways. Refusing to participate in the home’s annual Christmas tour of the store’s toy department, Max escapes to the basement. When Arnold wants to know why she did this, Max replies “with disbelief, suspicion and distrust … `That’s for little kids. There is no Santa Claus.’ ” Looking down at her pathetic, defiant little face, Arnold forgets his own predicament and makes up his mind to restore the little girl’s shattered faith in the magic of Christmas.

Sipherd’s stories, like those in the O. Henry canon, are notable for their surprise endings. Some of them ripple with fantasy; all, however, are real in the sense that they touch the reader’s heart with their goodness and their power to transmute despair into hope. One sees this at work in “The Crystal Silver China Club” in which the lonely retired bank teller, Philip Wetherhew, gladly accepts a temporary Christmas job selling china plates in the department where there are four other “temps” — a young man and three women. Happily, he suggests they form a friendship club and invites them to a Dec. 23 celebration dinner at his flat. Excitement among the members runs high until a fire in Mr. Wetherhew’s apartment forces the cancellation of the dinner. Mr. Wetherhew shows his mettle, however, and the dinner takes place in a manner that makes history at the department store.

As surely as a sunflower turns irresistibly to the sun, so one is drawn to “The Star Checker” and the final triumph of Jimmie Bright. A longtime employee of the department store, he marched in proud step to the smooth rhythm of the maintenance department in which he had started “as a personable lad of twenty, eager … to take on any job he was assigned.” When Jimmie reached 65 he could have retired. But why? His wife, Mary, was long since dead; his four children scattered to the four winds. The department store was where he felt he belonged. When Jimmie reached his 80s, many felt otherwise; but Jimmie’s boss kept him on. Then a month ago, Jimmie had a dizzy spell and fell to the floor, unconscious. It was when he returned to maintenance that he discovered he had been demoted to the menial task of checking light bulbs. Not changing them, mind you. Just checking them, including the Christmas lights throughout the store. The Star Checker, they called him. “Dead bulbs,” said Jimmie to himself. “It’s come to that.” Jimmie was right. But, as it turned out, Jimmie was wrong. A miracle was waiting in the wings for Jimmie. Some called it the work of a band of angels.

Ray Sipherd, senior staff editor at Reader’s Digest, is a three-time Emmy winner, and co-founder of “Sesame Street.” “The Christmas Store” is a shining epiphany that bears out the conclusion of Aldous Huxley who wrote, “after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.”

Bea Goodrich’s reviews are a monthly Books in Review feature. She also writes a review column and is the author of the award-winning nature series, “Happy Hollow Stories by Judge Tortoise.”