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"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)
Sedaris first drew national attention in 1992 with a stint on National Public Radio, on which he recounted his experiences as a Christmas elf at Macy's. He discussed "the code names for various posts, such as 'The Vomit Corner,' a mirrored wall near the Magic Tree" and confided that his response to "I'm going to have you fired" was the desire to lean over and say, "I'm going to have you killed." The radio pieces were such a hit that Sedaris, then working as a house cleaner, started getting offers to write movies, soap operas and Seinfeld episodes.
In subsequent appearances on NPR, Sedaris proved he wasn't just a velvet-clad flash in the pan; he's also wickedly funny on the subjects of smoking, speed, shoplifting and nervous tics. His work began appearing in magazines like Harper's and Mirabella, and his first book Barrel Fever, which included "SantaLand Diaries," was a bestseller. "These hilarious, lively and breathtakingly irreverent stories…made me laugh out loud more than anything I've read in years," wrote Francine Prose in the Washington Post Book World.
Since then, each successive Sedaris volume has zoomed to the top of the bestseller lists. In Naked, he recounts odd jobs like volunteering at a mental hospital, picking apples as a seasonal laborer and stripping woodwork for a Nazi sympathizer. The stocking stuffer-sized Holidays on Ice collects Sedaris' Christmas-themed work, including a fictional holiday newsletter from the homicidal stepmother of a 22-year-old Vietnamese immigrant ("She arrived in this house six weeks ago speaking only the words 'Daddy,' 'Shiny' and 'Five dollar now'. Quite a vocabulary!!!!!").
But Sedaris' best pieces often revolve around his childhood in North Carolina and his family of six siblings, including the brother who talks like a redneck gangsta rapper and the sister who, in a hilarious passage far too dirty to quote here, introduces him to the joys of the Internet. Sedaris' recent book Me Talk Pretty One Day describes, among other things, his efforts to learn French while helping his boyfriend fix up a Normandy farmhouse; he progresses "from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. 'Is thems the thoughts of cows?' I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window."
Sedaris has been compared to American humorists such as Mark Twain, James Thurber and Dorothy Parker; Publisher's Weekly called him "Garrison Keillor's evil twin." Pretty heady stuff for a man who claims there are cats that weigh more than his IQ score. But as This American Life producer Ira Glass once pointed out, it would be wrong to think of Sedaris as "just a working Joe who happens to put out these perfectly constructed pieces of prose." Measured by his ability to turn his experiences into a sharply satirical, sidesplittingly funny form of art, David Sedaris is no less than a genius.
Sedaris's younger sister Amy is also a writer and performer; the two have collaborated on plays under the moniker "The Talent Family." Amy Sedaris has appeared onstage as a member of the Second City improv troupe and on Comedy Central in the series Strangers with Candy.
"If I weren't a writer, I'd be a taxidermist," Sedaris said in a chat on Barnes and Noble.com. According to the Boston Phoenix, his collection of stuffed dead animals includes a squirrel, two fruit bats, four Boston terriers and a baby ostrich.
| SantaLand Diaries | 3 | |
| Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!! | 45 | |
| Dinah, the Christmas Whore | 69 | |
| Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol | 87 | |
| Based Upon a True Story | 94 | |
| Christmas Means Giving | 112 |
David Sedaris once again brilliantly entertains us with his fabulously witty insights and edgy musings on a different view of the holidays in this collection of short stories and embellished essays. A great escape for any memeber of the family during the trying times of the holidays, or for any person who can relate to the complicated nature families seem to exist in when they get together.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 10, 2000
Holidays on ice is absolutely one of the funniest books I've ever had the sheer pleasure of reading. The 'Macy's Elf' essay is side-splittingly funny.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 26, 2000
Holidays on Ice - It's hard to write a review through the tears of laughter. A very funny book. Remember the school Christmas plays? Suppose a theater critic was there and wrote a review. It happens in Holidays on Ice. Santaland Diaries is a classic that everyone who ever waited in line to sit on Santa's lap will appreciate. And there's the Christmas letter from hell. Don't wait until December to read this book. Read it now!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 27, 2012
Butt
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Posted December 30, 2011
David Sedaris did it again ! I love his books he makes me lmao each time i read them . Great holiday read ! A++
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 19, 2011
The first half of the book was soooo funny. However, I felt that the last half of the book was kind of blah. I love David Sedaris and would recommend any of his books if you like crude-ish humor.
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Posted December 18, 2011
Love this collection of fun holiday stories. I feel like it's not Christmas until I've read The Santaland Diaries.
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Posted December 15, 2011
I specifically wanted to take the time to write a review on this book. Before I did that I wanted to read what others thought about it and at first thought there must be something very wrong with my "sense of humor." After continuing on I realized that I too have the same feelings about this as many others did. The first story was entertaining so I kept thinking that it would get better. I am so glad I decided not to waste my time finishing it. I can't remember ever doing that before with a book. Thankfully I missed a story that was mentioned in a review. Although I did purchase this it isn't even worth passing on to anyone, even someone I don't know. I hope I never waste my money on another book like this. I will certainly never buy anything written by David Sedaris.
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Posted December 13, 2011
The first story is hilarious, the rest are boring and unfunny.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.welshcobdrivinggrams
Posted December 11, 2011
Santaland Diaries is an entertaining look at the Christmas industry. The other stories will leave you wondering about a number of things. The whole book is filled with David Sedaris' somewhat twisted and highly entertaining view of the world and the season.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.The first story was long and tedious (in my opinion). I had read other books so I decided to keep plugging along. The more I read, the better they became. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a good laugh.
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Posted January 5, 2011
The first book I read by David Sedaris was "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" and absolutely fell in love with the book.
I thought I would have the same sentiment with this book but I was sadly disappointed. There are couple stories within the book that are entertaining, but the majority of the book is sad and/or horrifying - there are definitely some shockers in this book. Plus, there are only a handful of stories that are related to the holidays, but in a twisted and sadistic way. If you are easily offended and/or do not want your holidays to be stained with stories from this book, do NOT buy this book.
Anonymous
Posted December 19, 2010
The first story about working as Santa's elf was humorous, but the rest were offensive, xenophobic and a big waste of my time and money.
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Posted June 24, 2010
His previous books were laugh-out-loud funny; I once had to stop my car because I was laughing too hard when listening to one of his books on tape. But this one was sad and disturbing. I struggled to keep reading after the woman killed her grandbaby in a clothes dryer, in an attempt to frame her husband's newly discovered adult illegitimate Vietnamese daughter (yes, that classic Xmas story we can all relate to). There were funny moments in the department store elf piece, although even that just sounded angry by the end.
Gifted humorists make us laugh at our own shortcomings, but they do this from our side of the line. It feels like Sedaris has crossed the line, really rather hates most people, and believes he can only top previous writing by developing more outrageous and darker plots -- ones that I can't relate to at all. It's a shame because there's a wealth of information to mine from day to day 'normal' human interactions around the holiday season.
Anonymous
Posted February 13, 2010
Thankfully I skimmed through this book before I gave it as a Christmas gift. I found the attempts at humour to be derisive and vulgar and wish I'd never bought it.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 23, 2010
This book is a great read for anyone looking for something fun and spirited. Easily a page-turner. Each short story tops the next. David Sedaris' writing appeals to readers getting away from haughty books. Take a break and spend the day with this exciting book!
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Posted January 16, 2010
This is a holiday classic. It makes the perfect gift for someone you know will appreciate these perverse and often baffling tales. As always, Sedaris will have you in stitches while simultaneously tugging at your heartstrings.
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Posted January 16, 2010
I love all things David Sedaris. I think if he were a designer, I'd wear his designs (if he designed for the middle aged, completely inglamourous mommy-paunched set). He's one of the few authors I've read who makes me laugh out loud--something everyone needs in abundance. He describes outwardly mundane events in his life that most readers can easily relate to, but he does it with such an understated, humorous hand that it makes you see things in a very different--sometimes poignant, sometimes tragic--light. This collection of stories about the holidays gave me--in my self-induced stay-at-home-mom role--some well needed food for thought.
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Posted January 16, 2010
highly entertaining. though most of the stories are familiar if you are a fan of david sedaris already, the holiday compilation gives them a fun twist. I listened to it while driving home for the holidays and it was the perfect way to pass the time. lots of fun.
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Overview
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...