Holla Daze

After several people mentioned how great it was, Holidays on Ice happened to be a strategically-placed impulse-buy at the local bookstore where I was frantically getting a last-minute birthday present for a friend. I knew it was a collection of short stories, which I always like better than long novels (it's the ADD thing), so I bought it.

It cracked me up. David Sedaris has a really sarcastic, snide way of writing about situations. All of the stories are about the modern madness of Christmas. There are only six stories, and I found myself laughing uncontrollably while reading the book at the bus stop. (Nearby people edged away and pretended not to notice.) Some of the stories are irreverent and impolite, and some have faint autobiographical undertones, but they're all tongue-in-cheek and hilarious. They're all told first-person, so what the reader ends up with are a full range of snapshots of character's holiday experiences, told in their jaded, snarky voices. And it's funny.

My favorite story was the first one, "SantaLand Diaries," about a 30-something elf at Macy's. The insights into the behavior patterns of store employees and customers are brilliant, and anyone who's ever worked retail can relate. "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol" was a hilarious review of school holiday pageants from a guy who doesn't care that they're just kids and not actors. "Dinah, the Christmas Whore," a story about a brother and sister who bring an abused prostitute home to their family, was at its core just a great story about being nonjudgmental and recognizing the good in everyone (this premise always works better at Christmas, it seems).

The three that started off interesting, went on a bit long, and had ridiculously improbably endings, were the ones I liked but didn't love. These three were also stories where the reader slowly begins to realize that the reliability of the narrator is questionable. "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" started off as a funny parody of holiday letters, where it's revealed that a recent addition to the family is the daughter the father unknowingly sired while serving in Vietnam. I was a little uncomfortable with stereotypic descriptions of the girl's choppy English, scanty outfits, and inclinations towards incest, until it gradually dawned on me that the narrator, the mother, was a little unbalanced, and the whole description of the girl was from her warped viewpoint. It was the same thing with "Christmas Means Giving," about two rich families who try to outdo each other every Christmas; the story quickly snowballed from the familiar and believable to the impossible and ridiculous. "Based Upon a True Story" made fun of made-for-TV movies that capittalize on tragic stories. It was probably my least favorite, but it was still well-written.

If anything, everyone should read "SantaLand Diaries."