David Sedaris is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Public Radio International's "This American Life." He is the author of the books When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked, and Barrel Fever.
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David Sedaris's beloved holiday collection is new again with six more pieces, including a never before published story. Along with such favorites as the diaries of a Macy's elf and the annals of two very competitive families, are Sedaris's tales of tardy trick-or-treaters ("Us and Them"); the difficulties of explaining the Easter Bunny to the French ("Jesus Shaves"); what to do when you've been locked out in a snowstorm ("Let It Snow"); the puzzling Christmas traditions of other nations ("Six to Eight Black Men"); what Halloween at the medical examiner's looks like ("The Monster Mash"); and a barnyard secret Santa scheme gone awry ("Cow and Turkey").
No matter what your favorite holiday, you won't want to miss celebrating it with the author who has been called "one of the funniest writers alive" (Economist).
"SantaLand Diaries," which originally appeared in "Barrel Fever," leads off the collection and may be Sedaris's best-known work. A laugh-out-loud-hysterical look at Sedaris's experiences working as an elf in SantaLand in Macy's, the story is a wickedly funny slicing-and-dicing of the holiday season and the good cheer that supposedly accompanies it. His dark humor is exactly what you need when you're getting sick of all the fuss about Christmas. Look how Sedaris handled this experience with a mother who was tiring of her son's relentless pestering:
The woman grabbed my arm and said, "You there, Elf, tell Riley here that if he doesn't start behaving immediately, then Santa's going to change his mind and bring him coal for Christmas." I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you're bad he comes to your house and steals things. I told Riley that if he didn't behave himself, Santa was going to take away his TV and all his electrical appliances and leave him in the dark. "All your appliances,including the refrigerator. Your food is going to spoil and smell bad. It's going to be so cold and dark where you are. Man, Riley, are you ever going to suffer. You're going to wish you never heard the name Santa." The woman got a worried look on her face and said, "All right, that's enough." I said, "He's going to take your car and your furniture and all the towels and blankets and leave you with nothing." The mother said, "No, that's enough, really."
"Dinah, the Christmas Whore" is another semiautobiographical essay, reprinted from the author's popular Naked collection. Clearly "Dinah" has a little more social commentary to it than "SantaLand Diaries." With generous doses of sarcasm and hyperbole, Sedaris tells of the Christmas when he and his older sister rescued a prostitute from her abusive boyfriend and took her home to meet their family. Funny and effective.
One of the new pieces is sidesplittingly funny. In "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol," a theater critic shreds several elementary school productions of those excruciatingly dull Christmas pageants we've all had to sit through at one time or another. In reviewing the Sacred Heart Elementary School's version of "The Story of the First Christmas," the critic notes the children's pathetic acting.
One could hardly blame them for their lack of vitality, as the stingy, uninspired script consists, not of springy dialogue, but rather of a deadening series of pronouncements. Mary to Joseph: "I am tired." Joseph to Mary: "We will rest here for the night." There's no fire, no give and take, and the audience soon grows weary of this passionless relationship.
The remaining three essays also provide good laughs. The essay "Based on a True Story" brilliantly skewers the television industry's eagerness to cash in on tragedy for the sake of high ratings. "Christmas Means Giving" pits two neighboring families against each other in a very public battle to the death for the title of Most Charitable Family. And "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" is an amusing, although overlong, look at an exceptionally bad year of a family expressed via a Christmas card.
Holidays on Ice is a small package, clocking in at only 123 pages. But Sedaris makes the most of those pages, and the compact size of the book makes it an ideal choice for a stocking stuffer. If you're tired of "The Night Before Christmas" and prefer something more along the lines of "A Very Manic-Depressive Charlie Brown Christmas," then Holidays on Ice is the best gift you could give yourself this year. Matt Schwartz
"SantaLand Diaries," which originally appeared in "Barrel Fever," leads off the collection and may be Sedaris's best-known work. A laugh-out-loud-hysterical look at Sedaris's experiences working as an elf in SantaLand in Macy's, the story is a wickedly funny slicing-and-dicing of the holiday season and the good cheer that supposedly accompanies it. His dark humor is exactly what you need when you're getting sick of all the fuss about Christmas. Look how Sedaris handled this experience with a mother who was tiring of her son's relentless pestering:
The woman grabbed my arm and said, "You there, Elf, tell Riley here that if he doesn't start behaving immediately, then Santa's going to change his mind and bring him coal for Christmas." I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you're bad he comes to your house and steals things. I told Riley that if he didn't behave himself, Santa was going to take away his TV and all his electrical appliances and leave him in the dark. "All your appliances,including the refrigerator. Your food is going to spoil and smell bad. It's going to be so cold and dark where you are. Man, Riley, are you ever going to suffer. You're going to wish you never heard the name Santa." The woman got a worried look on her face and said, "All right, that's enough." I said, "He's going to take your car and your furniture and all the towels and blankets and leave you with nothing." The mother said, "No, that's enough, really."
"Dinah, the Christmas Whore" is another semiautobiographical essay, reprinted from the author's popular Naked collection. Clearly "Dinah" has a little more social commentary to it than "SantaLand Diaries." With generous doses of sarcasm and hyperbole, Sedaris tells of the Christmas when he and his older sister rescued a prostitute from her abusive boyfriend and took her home to meet their family. Funny and effective.
One of the new pieces is sidesplittingly funny. In "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol," a theater critic shreds several elementary school productions of those excruciatingly dull Christmas pageants we've all had to sit through at one time or another. In reviewing the Sacred Heart Elementary School's version of "The Story of the First Christmas," the critic notes the children's pathetic acting.
One could hardly blame them for their lack of vitality, as the stingy, uninspired script consists, not of springy dialogue, but rather of a deadening series of pronouncements. Mary to Joseph: "I am tired." Joseph to Mary: "We will rest here for the night." There's no fire, no give and take, and the audience soon grows weary of this passionless relationship.
The remaining three essays also provide good laughs. The essay "Based on a True Story" brilliantly skewers the television industry's eagerness to cash in on tragedy for the sake of high ratings. "Christmas Means Giving" pits two neighboring families against each other in a very public battle to the death for the title of Most Charitable Family. And "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" is an amusing, although overlong, look at an exceptionally bad year of a family expressed via a Christmas card.
Holidays on Ice is a small package, clocking in at only 123 pages. But Sedaris makes the most of those pages, and the compact size of the book makes it an ideal choice for a stocking stuffer. If you're tired of "The Night Before Christmas" and prefer something more along the lines of "A Very Manic-Depressive Charlie Brown Christmas," then Holidays on Ice is the best gift you could give yourself this year. (Matt Schwartz)
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