Holidays on Ice

This book doesn't bar any holds, which is refreshing, even if sometimes I'm not sure exactly which of his characters he is lambasting and which he's holding up as the examples of truth. Maybe he's just lambasting *everyone*, regardless, and that's the point. There is no virtue; we're all terrible. And although I was originally under the impression these were personal "essays," I can only hope that most of these unsavory characters are fictional! (I'm being facetious. Of course they are.) Anyway, hilarious from the get-go, and thought provoking in a way that makes you awkwardly ashamed to be human, even though we can't help ourselves. I'm happy that the Macy's elf eventually worked his way into a successful writing career. If that's what happened.

This is my first encounter with Mr. Sedaris, but it won’t be my last. The pure fictional accounts are cringy and disturbing. There is casual child death in all of them. I’m at that age where child death - even satirized & fictionalized is never funny - just depressing & gross. However, the personal stories had me HOWLING. Mr. Sedaris & I must be the same age, because the tales of his childhood mirror some of my own. His experience as a “Christmas Elf” had me in tears. Laughter is wonderful medicine, and Im sorry I’ve missed this author for so long. I’m looking forward to reading more from him.

The holidays bring out something truly special in David Sedaris, making this more a "best of" than a mere holiday book. It's simply brilliant and, as many reviewers have experienced, one of those rare books that may cause you to laugh out loud in spite of yourself. Its only flaw is that it's a short book, but in content it's a giant. Avid NPR listeners will instantly recognize the first essay in this book, "Santaland Diaries"; the author's reading of that story is their single most requested encore. His description of becoming a Christmas Elf at Macy's is a true guilty pleasure; scathingly unkind and screamingly funny. If you ever held an undignified job, this is somehow your story - even if you never (pardon the pun) stooped so low as to play an elf. Sedaris writes like a post-modern Mark Twain, with a dry and piercing wit that drips with charm and cynicism in equal measure. His is the kind of writing that makes me go back to re-read a sentence, a paragraph, even a whole story hoping to savor some particular gem I only wish I'd written. His tone is often dark, even bleak, but there's a wry quality in his stories that lets you know he's really doing it all for effect - setting you up for an even bigger laugh because you know he's enjoying every minute of telling his sad, hilarious stories. Get in on his story now so you can savor the feeling of waiting impatiently for his next book - and there's no better way to start than to read Holidays on Ice.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving 2003, a news report circulated telling us of a woman trampled nearly to death during a mad rush in an early morning sale at her local Wal-Mart. Underneath her bruised and broken body was discovered a sad cardboard box containing an ultra-cheap DVD player, which the store managers kindly put on hold for her. The above story is something that isn't a million miles away from the non-fiction Christmas stories told in HOLIDAYS ON ICE. All these stories have the ring of truth about them even (as in the anecdote I mentioned above) if one suspects that the facts may have been somewhat embellished. It's their inherent believability that makes them funny. But once David Sedaris moves towards outright fiction, his stories are less successful. It feels as though he is constantly trying to outdo himself, making the stories more and more outrageous for fear that the mundane may not be as funny as the shocking. In any case, here are some quick comments on each of the five essays that make up this short collection: "SantaLand Diaries" -- David Sedaris entertains us with his stories of working a terrible job as one of Santa's elves in a Macy's department store. This is the highlight of the collection - a very funny piece indeed. People are funny to Sedaris. From the utterly bizarre people who take on the role of Santa and his elves to the equally strange people who show up to wander through SantaLand, all of them provide us with many laughs. "Season's Greetings to Our Friends And Family!!!" -- Not one of the more successful efforts in this collection. Oh, the initial idea is amusing enough, but the execution leaves much to be desired. In short, this is a parody of one of those over the top generic Christmas letters than some people will mail out to everyone they know in an attempt to compress an entire year's worth of news into a single newsletter-sized message. The essay is funnier when it's mocking the little things that go into these communications (the overuse of multiple explanation points, the disturbingly flowery language), but less funny when it tries to tell it's story. "Dinah, The Christmas Whore" -- The story of the Sedaris family taking in a lady of the evening. This essay is rather short, and ends up feeling more sweet than funny (though it's definitely amusing). "Front Row Center With Thaddeus Bristol" -- An even shorter essay than the previous offering, but it is hilarious. Yes, one of the more annoying things about the holidays is being dragged to the inevitable children's production of some Christmas themed story. Or, to be more specific, an adult directing a group of unenthusiastic children in a horribly boring play. Sedaris perfectly captures the deep, deep horror that each self-aware member of the audience will experience if forced to attend one of these ghastly affairs. "Based Upon a True Story" -- Yikes. I didn't care for this one at all. An amoral television producer comes to a small town on Christmas to ask permission for the filming of a Based On A True Story TV Movie. This might have been much more amusing had Sedaris not beaten us over the head with his satire. "Christmas Means Giving" -- Again, a fictional story, and, again, not as successful as the true-life memoirs. This details the escalation that two families undergo in their attempt to become the biggest present-giver in the neighborhood. Sedaris abandons any attempt of subtlety and instead goes for over-the-top laughs. As you may have gathered, all of the stories in this small collection revolve around the holidays, and there's a lot of comedy fruit to be harvested from that time of year. But for as many as he successfully picks, he bludgeons others to pulp. It was a short collection so even the uninteresting pieces don't drag on for too long. HOLIDAYS ON ICE makes for a handy antidote to anyone feeling overwhelmed by the "holiday cheer" that comes around without fail every year at this time.

As someone who gets depressed this time of year, and I know I'm not alone in this - this is my antidepressant! How can I be sad at all the signs of Christmas while I'm laughing my butt off with David Sedaris as an elf with me? Best to listen to it read by Sedaris himself, (he reads his work SO well!) but I have heard it so many times that when I read it I can almost hear him speaking in my head. I used to listen to it on the car between Thanksgiving and New Year's, and it really helped. Buy it for the people you know who get sad or just don't like this time of year!!! I do have a complaint with Amazon though - my copy, shipped along with another book, arrived bent! I'll try weighing it down with a stack of heavy books to weigh it down and hopefully straighten it out, but they should have shipped it differently - maybe between 2 sheets of heavy cardboard or something. But I highly recommend the book - one of the funniest I've ever read!!!!

All of Sedaris' books are excellent! I read this one every holiday season and laugh all over again. I do wish he'd publish another book. It's been a LONG time.

I'd been wanting to try a book by David Sedaris. This one popped as a book club Christmas selection. I expected to laugh out loud a lot but it was more like a chuckle here and there. But....I couldn't put the book down. I was really captured by his story telling of some very surreal and disturbing topics. I winced at some of the insensitive terms he used but I kept reading because the stories were overall entertaining and I felt some of the language was still somewhat tolerated at the time he wrote the book. The first story about his experience as a department store elf is great. I also liked the story he told about his sister's coworker.

"A mildly amusing collection of satirical stories, some non-fiction, others fiction, wherein Sedaris lets the reader see what it is he thinks the Holidays are all about." Pros: Quick read and some genuinely amusing stories Cons: I understand that the author is a satirist and so none of the stories should be taken seriously but, to be honest, I felt like he was condescending to me. It was a weird feeling to get it from a book and I just felt like I was too immature to "get" the humor. Full Review: A quick and mildly entertaining read from one of, if not, the, most well known satirists, David Sedaris. Holidays on Ice is part memoir and part fiction to create an odd but interesting concept of what the Holiday spirit really means. Some stories, like SantaLand Diaries, Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol and Jesus Shaves had some genuinely entertaining and amusing parts. Sedaris' re-telling of his time working as an Elf in a Department Store "Winter Wonderland" during the Holiday Season in New York is priceless. Front Row was a brutal, scathing review of children's elementary school pageant/holiday plays, which we've all suffered through and Sedaris' "critic" holds nothing back. And Jesus Shaves is more about Easter and how different cultures celebrate it in different ways. The ending line was priceless. Other stories like Seasons Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!! and Based Upon a True Story a, I think, were too out there, a little too far fetched as to be believable or, in my opinion, that amusing. Though Seasons Greetings had its amusing moments, since it was basically taking those "holiday newsletters" you get from extended family and turning it on its head, for the most part it just left me feeling kind of horrified. And Based Upon, was just...strange. More or less written as a script that a TV Producer would give to prompt the people of a rundown town to spill the beans on a true "Christmas miracle", I just found myself going through the motions of reading it to get it done. It all probably boils down the fact that my sense of humor is most likely too immature for the likes of Sedaris. Perhaps I should have started with another of his works, like the renowned, Me Talk Pretty One Day, but overall, Holidays on Ice just left me feeling kind of meh. It was a quick read which I appreciated since it gave me something to do during commercial breaks but overall I just wasn't all that impressed. Far be it from me though to dissuade anyone from reading. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys satire and who is looking for something outside of the box.