Books: Tell It to Santa Claus

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. BAXTER (181 pp.)—Edward Streefer—Harper ($3).

Spending beyond their income on gifts

for Christmas —Swing doors and crowded lifts and

draperied jungles—What shall we buy for our husbands and sons Different from last year?

Thus British Poet Louis MacNeice in a nervously cynical poem, Christmas Shopping. Cynicism has never been the special gift of Humorist Edward (Dere Mablc, Father of the Bride) Streeter, but the problem of his latest hero is pretty much the one posed by the poet. It is, in fact, the problem of all bill-paying males, and as the recently retired vice president oi the Bank of New York, Author...