Holidays on Ice, by David Sedaris is, as Abraham Lincoln once said, the sort of thing that appeals to people who like that sort of thing. In general, I like that sort of thing.
Those of use who follow the trends on National Public Radio have been enjoying David Sedaris' off-beat sense of humor for several years. He is a regular contributor to This American Life which everyone really should be listening to. Mr. Sedaris first hit it big with "Santaland Diaries", an account of the Christmas season he spent working as an elf in Macy's Santaland in New York City. "Santaland Diaries" makes up the bulk of Holidays on Ice and is really the major reason for reading the book.
There's a lot of strange stuff that goes on behind the scenes at Macy's Santaland, but you really have no idea until you've read Santaland Diaries. There's the Santa who never comes out of character even when no one else is around, the grown woman who dresses and acts like a little girl when she comes to visit Santa, the hard sell to buy photographs that won't even arrive until after the holiday is over, not to mention the sometimes scandalous behavior of the elves. Mr. Sedaris tells his story with a very dry wit that skewers when it should and steps aside when events get truly emotional. This is one of the few times when he allows the reader to get sentimental at all. He brings the reader right out of sentimentality as soon as possible of course.
The remainder of the stories are more along the lines of what a snarky undergraduate would come up with when asked to write about a holiday for a creative writing class. Some of them are very enjoyable like "Dinah the Christmas Whore" and "Merry Christmas to Our Friends and Family". (Be warned, some of his humor is not for the faint of heart.) I do like "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol" which features and acerbic theatre critic writing a series of reviews of local elementary school Christmas pageants. The reaming stories "Based Upon a True Story" and "Christmas Means Giving" serve the purpose of making the book just long enough to charge full price for it. You can skip them, unless you are really looking for that sort of thing.
I'm giving Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris four out of five stars, mainly based on the strength of "Santaland Diaries."
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