One of my most anticipated Christmas traditions is to read David Sedaris’s Holidays on Ice to perk up my Christmas cheer and get me in the holiday mood. David Sedaris is laugh out loud hilarious, as usual, when explaining certain holiday traditions to others, cultural holiday differences, and chronicling the diary of a Macy’s elf. Although on the paperback edition of the book there is a drink on the rocks looking mighty inviting, I would not sip anything while reading this mirthful collection of seasonal tales, unless you want to end up spitting it out mid-chortle. We all need a satirical reminder to keep our sense of humor around the holidays!
-Lisanne E.

I have enjoyed listening to David Sedaris on NPR and reading his books for a long time, but I question the wisdom of the choice of this for my Book club's next selection. I am sure that it can be viewed by some as a "fun" read, but I would prefer something with more substance for an interesting discussion. Perhaps it is also because I have never leaned toward summer, or beach reading or holiday reads.

As I suggested prior to reading the book, I did not enjoy reading this, despite its brevity of 166 pages. I have heard the selection about "Department Store Elves" on NPR's This American Life several times and have chuckled each time. However, the book's tone of mockery of others and its attempts at satyr struck me painfully flat.

David Sedaris is messed up! I can't even begin to tell you, you'll just have to read these Christmas stories on crack and find out for yourself.

Holidays on Ice is a collection of six short stories all wrapped up in a black Christmas bow. They are dark, sarcastic, evil, irreverent, funny, real, revealing, and sweet.

SantaLand Diaries recounts Sedaris's experience working as a Christmas elf in Santaland at Macy's in Manhattan. He encounters overzealous, self-centered, and racist parents. He flirts with a fellow elf to learn later that he's a bit of an elf-tease ("Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.") He observes human nature in all of it's narcissistic, misguided glory.

Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family is a suburban mom's Christmas form letter. She updates her loved ones on her trials of the past year spiraling into a dark (O.K., pitch black) and unexpected ending.

Dinah, the Christmas whore is by far my favorite story. "From this moment on, the phrase ho ho ho would take on a whole new meaning..." It reminds us that there are more layers to people than meets the eye...including moms, sisters, and prostitutes. In a style specific to Sedaris, it celebrates family connection.

Front Row Center is one man's review of local children's Christmas productions. Mean, biting, and funny. Sedaris says what he wants to, and we don't really care if he's kidding or not.

Based Upon a True Story/Christmas Means Giving go to the extreme to satirize man's greed, arrogance, and need to compete. His in-your-face story telling makes you want to be a better person...lest you're the subject of his next parody.

This doesn't deserve five stars, or even four. It's great fun, but short. Sedaris is definetely twisted and talented, but I can't give this the same amount of stars that I would dish out to a true classic novel.

me when the ONLY job Indeed has recommended to me is as a Santa despite the 50k of debt I acquired to get a degree

Listened to the audio of this which I’d recommend. Great holiday read… light and funny.

Mean and Misanthropic.

I do not like mean-spirited sardonic wit. For the most part, the author’s cynical comments are derisive, insulting, and misanthropic. There are few (four to be exact) clever and funny essays, but black humor predominates the essays, much to my disappointment if not disgust.

SANTALAND DIARIES is by far the most humorous, and is it positioned as the first essay in the collection. Good thing, too. Reading it first whet my appetite in anticipation for a delightful read for the remainder of the essays. Sadly, that was not to be. I didn’t laugh out loud in ANY of the remaining essays. However, three essays are noteworthy, combining humor with thoughtful reflection: SIX TO EIGHT BLACK MEN, US AND THEM and SANTA SHAVES. The remaining essays? Metaphorically clever essays falter or fail to deliver. Others are downright ugly.

Although this is an older publication, the author is new to me. While awaiting for his new release, CALYPSO, I decided to read anything of his currently available. I certainly hope CALYPSO is worthy of the hype. HOLIDAYS ON ICE certainly is not.

A short audio compilation of stories published elsewhere and some odd fiction. Just okay for me. Two were brilliant,but I’ve already heard them. So, it’s a no.

There was some 5-star stuff here. Santaland Diaries is a classic. The play form, at the Horizon Theater has been our family Atlanta Christmas Eve tradition for years (we are Jewish, but whatever) and its always a blast. And there is other 5-star material here (6 to 8 Black Men springs to mind), all of which I have heard on other recordings. But there is also some terrible stuff here. Basically, if its based on Sedaris' real life, its going to be good, if its fiction its going to be bad and really offensive. Now I am hard to offend, really, but the constant and casual use of the word "retard" as an insult got me, as did a punchline about a baby being murdered in a washing machine and dryer. and the unapologetically racist depictions of characters. Also the stories are simply not very good. So the 2.5 is an average, rounded down for hideous racism and general meanness. I really love Sedaris, I have a history of 5-star reads from him, but you can skip this one.

Sooo many people put this on Must Read and Annual Holiday Tradition lists, so I was excited to finally get my hands on it. Unfortunately I found most of the vignettes to be at best mean spirited, at worst pretty offensive. This is similar to how I felt about the last DS book I read. But for whatever reason, I’m still not ready to give up on him yet.

I finished this a few days ago, and I already can't remember all that I wanted to say about this collection of short stories and essays by David Sedaris. I was not familiar with David Sedaris when I got this audio book. I think I must have picked it up on sale last year at some point, and because I'm a fan of all things Christmas I thought I'd give it a go. My two star rating probably makes it seem like I didn't really enjoy listening to this, but that's not exactly true. It was okay. There were some stories I laughed out loud for. There were several where I knew that I was supposed to be laughing out loud, but it didn't quite hit me as funny enough for that. And then there was one that I'm still scratching my head about. There is this genre of comedy/jokes that ... well, I don't even know how to describe it ... I guess it is something so over the top and inappropriate that the humor is that it is absolutely nothing that anyone would joke about. Seriously, I can't describe it. It's not like stupid middle school humor where emerging adolescents giggle over talking about sex jokes or stuff like that, but maybe it's more of the adult version of that. I hesitate to say more because I seriously am not sure that I totally understood what I was listening to. I'm going to share it with my daughter and son-in-law to see if this short story was saying what I thought I was hearing. So, anyway ... the verdicts out on that one.

Here's what I'll say ... I can see why there are lots of people out there who are David Sedaris fans. I wonder how old some of these stories are because he uses words like "retarded" pretty liberally in some of these stories, and that is highly inappropriate these days. It was jarring to hear it spoken so casually in a way it was when I was in school. It made me think some of these stories must have been written in the 70s and 80s and not more recently. I couldn't quite get into them enough to find it all that enjoyable, but there were some moments of keen social commentary and touching humor to keep me engaged until the end. Like I say ... two stars. It was okay.

Entertaining and twisted is what someone said. Very much of both. Laugh out loud funny. I really needed this.

Okay. Let it be said: "Santaland Diaries," the first essay of this book, is wonderful. But the rest of the book is basically filler; this was before Sedaris found his niche (humor essayist), and it really shows. He should never, ever write fiction, for example, and yet he tries to here. The results are not pretty, or even very readable.

It's also notable that half of the pieces in this short book have appeared in other collections of his. So, really, this is not worth buying; get "Santaland Diaries" some other way, and regret nothing about missing the rest of this collection.