Holidays on Ice is great right down to the cover which features an alcoholic beverage with ice in in it (adorable and much like my family's holidays). It features Christmas themed stories some his holiday experiences, others just featuring his talent as a writer. Santa land Diaries is the first essay and it is the star of this show. These are journal entries from when David at the age of 33 worked as an elf at Macy's Santaland...at the age of 33.
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It chronicles the insane parents, the unfortunate children, an interesting and multi-cultural array of Santa's and the policies Macy's enforces with regard to Santaland. There is so much gold here it is unreal, a Santa who never breaks character ( he is called Santa Santa) there is a gay elf (snowball) who leads all the other gay elves and a Santa on, there is a designated corner for children to vomit in, I could go on.

One of my fav bits
"The back hallway was jammed with people. There was a line for Santa and a line for the women's bathroom, and one woman, after asking me a thousand questions already asked, which is the line for the women's bathroom? And I shouted that I thought it was the line with all the women in it. And she said, I'm going to have you fired. I had two people say that to me today, I'm going to have you fired. Go ahead, be my guest.
I'm wearing a green velvet costume. It doesn't get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I'm going to have you fired, and I want to lean over, and say I'm going to have you killed."

Isn't he great!
If you don't love Sedaris you may not enjoy the rest of the collection Santaland by far outshines the rest.
I listen to the audio version which features Sedaris himself reading, I enjoy listening to him so much more then reading it,he brings that extra something.
At one point in Santaland Diaries "Santa" Santa demands that David sing "Away in A Manger" at first David claims not to know but when pushed by "Santa" Santa he decides to sing it as Billie Holliday would have sung it, then we are treated to this rendition which causes my dog EverlyBrothers to start howling as if he was singing with him,
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it was like in 101 Dalmations when they used the friggen Twilight Bark for trying to find the puppies,anyway I found this made it even funnier, my neighbors maybe not. But I think David Sedaris would have got a chuckle from it.

This is my first David Sedaris, and it won't be my last. He's been recommended to me on the fringes for a while, but I finally took the plunge after someone compared him to Shirley Jackson, a favorite of mine. The comparisons are accurate. A good bit of humor with some very dark turns sprinkled with subtle social commentary define this collection of both fiction and non-fiction shorts. Yet, something about it just didn't work for me. I loved the opening story, SantaLand, as well as the one about getting locked out of the house on a winter day by their mother. Both nonfiction, and generally I found the nonfiction better in this one. As for the fiction stories, well, it seemed Sedaris isn't sure when to end a joke. I don't mind a good dark turn, but to tack one onto the end unnecessarily after the overall point has already been made is more manipulation by shock value rather than good writing. This collection intrigued me enough to want to read more even if I didn't love it.

I’ve heard or read all of these stories at some point, but it was great to revisit them in this collection. Jesus Shaves and Six to Eight Black Men are two of my all time favorites; even after rereading for them for the umpteenth time, they had me doubled over with laughter. I prefer the stories based on Sedaris’s real life experiences over the other fictional first person (or animal) narratives. Those fictional pieces can be kinda dark, and they make up about half of this book. Still, a great collection for people who love Sedaris and/or the grinches among us.

I only found one of these stories to be really funny. The others were just the kind of humour that gets on my nerves.

In case you aren't aware . . . .

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Yep. My Christmas situation has escalated to the point where every year when the clocks strikes 12:01 on November 1st I channel my inner Linda Belcher and am ready to get my freak tree-trim on. Along with the dragging, carrying, yanking, pulling, swearing and crying that goes with getting my hoard from the basement to the various areas of my house also comes the annual re-listen to my Darling David telling me tales of Christmases past. The opinions written in my original review below still stand, but I can't imagine a time when I won't have this on audio while I decorate . . . .

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ORIGINAL REVIEW:

If you follow my reading, you’re probably wondering what the hell could have happened to make me rate a Sedaris selection less than every Star. Well, lemma tell ya.

Although I was aware that this is a collection of items pulled from other Sedaris books, many may not so it will appear to be a money grab . . . which it totally is. I don’t really care, though, since (1) I got it from the library so it cost me zero dollars and (2) David Sedaris could take a dump on paper, bind it up, and I’d still buy a copy so I could really give a rip whether this was material I was already familiar with.

I put a hold on the audio version of Holidays On Ice in order to hopefully keep me in the Christmas spirit. You see, usually around the week before Thanksgiving I look a little something like this . . . . .

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I want to put Christmas trees in every room of the house and bake and place myself firmly on The Good List. But then December rolls around and I am faced with the daunting task of shopping combined with the busiest time of year at work and I completely lose my mojo and just want to hibernate until the new year. I thought listening to David would at least help me fake it ‘til I make it à la Clark Griswold . . . .

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And for the most part it did. David’s tales of his experiences as a “Little Elf” in the “Santaland Diaries” are not to be missed, and the ever present “Six to Eight Black Men” never gets less funny. The problem this time was the inclusion of some fictional shorts in addition to the riotous autobiographical entries. To be fair, even some of them started out funny. Sadly, it seems David doesn’t know when to stop when it comes to fictional works and takes the joke to the point of it being the literary equivalent of a beaten dead horse. Still, those “meh” selections can easily be skipped so you can get to the real gems like those mentioned above, or another favorite of mine: Jesus Shaves. You can read that essay for free HERE or take a listen/look HERE.

Новогодние истории для читателей широких взглядов: хочешь, жуткий абсурд, хочешь — семейные посиделки в обществе проститутки, хочешь — травелог и размышления, что это за little helpers у этого дрянного Санты.
Выражение Ho, ho, ho, цитируя автора, заиграло новыми красками.

In 2004 I was in a relationship where partner and I had very different ideas of what the holidays should look like. He's all about family and one-up-manship in the category of who brought the most unique/popular gift and who created the best dish for the potluck end of the Christmas meal.
Me, I'd rather vacate. So I packed up the dog this one year and drove to a secret get-away for Christmas alone. (Think "ahhh," not "awww") His gift to me was this book on CD, which I listened to during the 3 hour drive to my holiday sanctuary. I laughed so hard that I have to say, this was among my BEST holidays EVER.
Now it's a tradition for me. Long road trip over Christmas to the get-away destination and Holidays On Ice in the CD player.

I keep trying to like David Sedaris but I just don’t find him that funny or entertaining. Three books in, he’s like the sad-sack but reasonably witty guy in your sophomore writing class that was amusing while the semester was going but you don’t feel a strong urge to connect with on Facebook when it's time to move on. His observations are dry, cynical and devoid of insight. I picked up this slim volume at the library book sale and thought it would be funny to read in June with Christmas ages away. Alas, the stories are holiday-related but none of them are much to cherish as part of a holiday tradition. The only standout is his compilation of stories from working at Macy’s during Christmas, which is called “Santaland Diaries”. It’s amusing and episodic. The rest are downbeat and shrill stories that happen to occur around holidays. Two are so arch that I found myself speeding through them to the end because I knew they were just boring rants that wouldn't go anywhere – especially the tiresome closing story, “Christmas Means Giving”. Again – this would be amusing from a high school kid but someone published this thing? I think I’m done with Sedaris and trying to figure out why he’s a cultural icon for many.

A spotted child visited Santa, climbed up on his lap, and expressed a wish to recover from chicken pox. Santa leapt up.

David Sedaris' collection of essays partly set in winter or around the holiday season, partly also loosely connected to other holidays like Easter, was short and a rather quick read, but not my kind of humour most of the time. Apparently it's his signature style to exaggerate wildly and to not be PC (I would call it offensive and insensitive), which is just not for me.

I could've (should've?) known better. At uni, I read a few of his essays from the collection Me Talk Pretty One Day which I disliked, finding his observations and descriptions of people insulting and just not funny (call me a party pooper alright). But since I love everything Christmassy, the cover and the concept of the introductory piece, “SantaLand Diary”, made me buy the book.
I liked a few stories and parts of others, but overall I wasn't impressed and more often left irritated.
The first essay, also being the longest and thus the main one of the bunch, is Sedaris' cynical and acerbic account of his experience of working as an elf at Macy's department store in the weeks leading up to Christmas. This story I found mostly amusing. Apart from blundering bits like “These people were profoundly retarded. They were rolling their eyes and wagging their tongues and staggering toward Santa.”, I enjoyed the author's account of grumpy Santas, bewildered foreign tourists, pestering 'elves' chatting up moms waiting in line for Santa, and perfectionist parents trying to get the perfect holiday photo:

Vanity and Damascus, look over here, no, look here.”
“Santa, can you put your arm around Amy and shake hands with Paul at the same time?”
“That's good. That's nice.”
I have seen parents sit their child upon Santa's lap and immediately proceed to groom: combing hair, arranging a hemline, straightening a necktie. I saw a parent spray their child's hair, Santa treated as though he were a false prop made of cement, turning his head and wincing as the hair spray stung his eyes.

But already in this story it became apparent to me that Sedaris often goes overboard with his essays to be entertaining and thus makes it too implausible for me to believe. I got rather annoyed by his over the top style.

Admittedly, the exasperated and appalled article about some grade schoolers' Christmas plays, “Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol”, had me chuckling a lot, since I too consider those productions dull at best and traumatising at worst:

To those of you who enjoy the comfort of a nice set of thumbscrews, allow me to recommend any of the crucifying holiday plays and pageants currently eliciting screams of mercy from within the confines of our local elemantary and middle schools. I will, no doubt, be taken to task for criticizing the work of children but, as any pathologist will agree, if there's cancer it's best to treat it as early as possible.

I found fat-shaming an on-stage kid offending, though (“The false beard tended to muffle his speech, but they could hear his chafing thighs all the way to the North Pole.”), but, well, I guess, it was the 1990s?

This book has been described as being a collection of essays, which I found puzzling, because obviously some of the pieces were short stories (you don't even have to look as far as to the last one about speaking farm animals doing Secret Santa). This confused me a bit when reading. But even if they were labelled as fictive stories, I still would have had problems with the tone and exaggerated style.

It would be a lie to truly say I "read" this book, because I gave up on it & just started flicking through, in the hopes of something redeeming leaping out at me. Nothing did. I enjoyed the elf story but really disliked the rest. It left me feeling plain icky and upset. A cynical and depressing view of the world.

it’s giving shouts and murmurs


santaland diaries was def the best but seasons greetings to our friends and family and Christmas means giving were close seconds

I'm very glad I read this just after Christmas, because I was already not feeling the "Christmas spirit" this year, and if I read this beforehand it definitely wouldn't have helped at all. If you're looking for a good Christmas book to read, do yourself a favour and stay away from Holidays on Ice. It's a collection of six short stories which all take place around Christmas, but these stories are incredibly mean-spirited, cynical, and critical.

The stories degrade everyone from parents to people who live in the Southern states in the U.S., to Vietnamese immigrants, to the rich, to children performing in Christmas plays at their schools, to prostitutes, and more. Several of the stories are downright racist and xenophobic to the point of making them completely unenjoyable, and even the ones that are "okay" are void of any pleasure; there's no "Christmas spirit" to be found in any of these stories.

These are stories where babies are murdered by being put through a wash and dry cycle in a washer and dryer, where rich people selfishly and vainly compete with one another to see who can make themselves look more charitable (without giving two sh*ts about actually helping anyone), to the point where they eventually donate their children to homeless former inmates to be murdered and to where they donate their own body parts...

They're disgusting, cynical, nihilistic stories, and though they're well written and occasionally funny, the overall result is very little enjoyment (and a boatload of depression) for the reader. I do not recommend this collection to basically anyone. Individual ratings for each story, and my overall rating for the book as a whole, are below:

SantaLand Diaries: 3.5/5
Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!! : 3/5
Dinah, the Christmas Whore: 2.5/5
Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol: 1.5/5
Based Upon a True Story: 1/5
Christmas Means Giving: 1/5

= 12.5 / 25 = 50% = 2.5 stars

But I'm rounding down to two stars because of how disgusting, un-Christmas-like, and ultimately unenjoyable this cruel collection of stories was.