134 pages, Paperback
First published December 1,1997
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.
Vanity and Damascus, look over here, no, look here.”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.
“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.
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?
