A lot like Christmas

A lovely set of SFF stories set around Christmas, with a lot of humour, human emotion and a number of missed opportunities for people to know each other better. The author also takes the opportunity to give her opinion (through the characters) on what she thinks is the best Christmas film to watch or book to read. A list of recommended Christmas films, books and stories is also given at the end.

• "Miracle": the Spirit of Christmas Present (as in gift) visits an office lady who wants to be noticed by a fellow worker. Only, the spirit apparently keeps messing up her gifts, while waiting for her to discover her desire. Which she met her with the help of another fellow worker.

• "All About Emily": a stage actress encounters an android in the form of a teenage girl, whom she fears may take over her acting job. But what the android does next surprises her, and she finds herself helping the android to try to get her dream job: as a Rockettes dancer.

• "Inn": a rehearsal for a Christmas play at a church gets interrupted by a pair of people that are lost. But the person who discovers them realize that they are not your usual homeless people, but are intimately connected with the season. And now, she has to try to help them find their way back to their path before all is lost.

• "All Seated on the Ground": a hilarious story about alien visitors who visit the earth. But all they do is silently move around as a group while giving withering stares at people's efforts to communicate with them. Then, there is a breakthrough when they are suddenly all seated on the ground in a mall that is playing Christmas songs. And it is up to a junior member of the alien communications team and a choir master to figure out just what made them do it, and to finally communicate with the aliens before the aliens give up on humanity and leave.

• "In Coppelius’s Toyshop": a man brings his girlfriend's child to a location to pass the child on to a minder before he leaves for a game. But he loses the child in a huge nearby toy shop whose escalators don't go where he expects them to go and directions don't make sense. He finally finds some stairs, but they would lead his to one unexpected destination. A very seasonal story with a strong "Twilight Zone" vibe.

• "Adaptation": a divorced father is looking forward to spending time with his daughter on Christmas Eve. But his job at a bookshop, plus his ex-wife's manipulations to keep the daughter away, take their toll on him. But maybe with some help, in the form of certain Christmas spirits, may be able to help him adapt and become a better person.

• "deck.halls@boughs/holly": in a future where professionals handle the task of coming up with Christmas themes and fulfilling them for clients, one professional is hired by an elderly lady with a handsome nephew to do her Christmas decoration. Things change when the professional discovers who the elderly lady really is, but that does not mean changing her view of what Christmas means.

• "Cat’s Paw": a Sherlock Holmes type mystery story, where a Colonel and his partner, the Detective, are called to the home of a rich man at Christmas to solve a mystery. The rich man's daughter is on a mission to convince humanity that primates are intelligent, and has a gorilla and orangutan as servants. The mystery to be investigated was a dud, but then a murder occurs and the detective, of course, solves it by deduction. Only, the Colonel has an alternative explanation, and it is up to the reader to decide whose solution is correct.

• "Now Showing": a girl goes with her friends to a huge entertainment centre to watch a film. Only, for unknown reasons, the film she wants to watch is sold out, or she has trouble trying to get in to watch it. It would take a (former) friend to show her the possible conspiracy behind the inability of people like her to watch films that are not as popular as blockbusters in such centres.

• "Newsletter": a lady's family traditionally writes and sends out newsletters over the Christmas period. Only this time, the lady wants to skip it: until observations about people being really nice to each other during the holiday period lead her to think something really strange is happening, which she could write about.

• "Epiphany": a priest suddenly leaves his parish due to an epiphany that tells him to go west during a snowstorm. Who he meets along the way, and what he finds out during his journey, will inform him about a possible second coming of a saviour, and his possible role in the process.

• "Just Like the Ones We Used to Know": everybody would like it to snow on Christmas Eve. So one year, it does, everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. The story follows some people on the day as it happens: a bridesmaid of a wedding where everything must go right for the bride, a divorced mother hoping to keep her son for the day from her possessive husband, a man struggling to cook a duck for the first time, a climate scientist who monitors the unusual event, and others in the story.

This is a terrific collection of Christmas fantasy stories by the fabulous Connie Willis, with a couple of should-be classics and some other fascinating stuff. Willis spends more time on pop culture like movies and songs than on religion, thought she does some of that as well. Most of the stories are quite funny.

The book starts off brilliantly with "Miracle," a very funny and charming story about a woman plagued by a genial but hugely irritating Christmas spirit. This is a must-read.

Other great stories include Now Showing, Newsletter, and All Seated on the Ground.

The weirdest story is the Kafkaesque "In Coppelius's Toyshop." If you've ever wondered what a Kafka Christmas story would be like, this is it.

Most of the rest are also fun but leave less of an impact. There's a murder mystery that has virtually nothing to do with Christmas and is almost entirely the "solution" part, there's a cute sci-fi riff on All About Eve, there's a fun story about an overworked Christmas planner.

Of the two specifically Christian stories, one is a cute thing about Joseph and Mary very far from home and the other is an okay thing about a guy looking for the second coming. They're okay, but the sincerity takes out some of the fun.

The only story I would excise is "Adaptation", which is both depressing and stressful and ultimately has a peculiar moral that made zero sense to me.

A great set of Christmas stories even if like me you read them in the summer.