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Oct
10
Book Review: Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
2008 at 2pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
This hilarious collection of holiday-themed stories and essays from David Sedaris was originally published in 1998 and was re-released earlier this month with six new stories, one of which has never been published before. I picked up a copy to have autographed earlier this week, and though I was planning to save it for Christmas reading, I couldn’t resist the temptation to escape with this wonderful little book during what has been a really crazy week at work.
Holidays on Ice opens with “SantaLand Diaries,” in which Sedaris describes his experience working as an elf at the New York City Macy’s SantaLand Christmas exhibit. Under the elf name Crumpet, he tolerated obnoxious children and their even more obnoxious parents as he ushered them through SantaLand. During their training, Sedaris and his fellow elves took a detailed tour of SantaLand:
We traveled the path a second time and were given the code names for various posts, such as “The Vomit Corner,” a mirrored wall near the Magic Tree, where nauseous children tend to surrender the contents of their stomachs. When someone vomits, the nearest elf is supposed to yell “VAMOOSE,” which is the name of the janitorial product used by the store. We were taken to the “Oh, My God, Corner,” a position near the escalator. People arriving see the long line and say “Oh, My God!” and it’s an elf’s job to calm them down and explain that it will take no longer than an hour to see Santa.
The “SantaLand Diaries” chronicle dozens of ridiculous, entertaining, and more-than-a-little disgusting moments, like this one:
This evening I was working as a Counter Elf at the Magic Tree when I saw a woman unzip her son’s fly, release his penis, and instruct him to pee into a bank of artificial snow.
Guess they really wanted to see Santa and didn’t want to start over in the line. Honestly, I’m surprised I haven’t seen something like this in our store, though the children’s lead and I did once find a small, round piece of poop under a display. No joke.
In my other favorite piece, “Jesus Shaves,” Sedaris writes about the French course he took when he moved to France and the hilarity of listening to his fellow classmates explain Easter to each other.
The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. “It is,” said one, “a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and…” She faltered and her fellow countryman came to her aid.
“He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two…morself of…lumber.”
The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.
“He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father.”
“He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.”
“He nice, the Jesus.”
“He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.”
You get the idea. Holidays on Ice is filled with wonderful little bits of cultural revelation like these.
Taking things in a completely different but equally humorous direction, “The Monster Mash” chronicles Sedaris’s experience hanging out at a coroner’s office and learning about the many, erm, unfortunate ways in which people die. Seeing the body of an eighty-year-old man who had fallen off a ladder while changing a lightbulb and laid dead in his un-air-conditioned home for 4 1/2 days before being found turns out to be “the best argument for the buddy system I had ever seen,” and it is quickly added to his list of “don’ts.”
By this point in my stay, my list of don’ts covered three pages and included such reminders as: never fall asleep in a Dumpster, never underestimate a bee, never drive a convertible behind a flatbed truck, never get old, never get drunk near a train, and never, under any circumstances, cut off your air supply while masturbating. This last one is a nationwide epidemic, and it’s surprising the number of men who do it while dress in their wife’s clothing, most often while she is out of town.
If you know Sedaris’s work, then you know he is irreverent and witty and that for him, no topic is off limits. Holidays on Ice will not disappoint long-term fans, and it would be a great introduction for the uninitiated. It’s also the perfect size to be a stocking-stuffer for that less-than-traditional friend….though I suppose it would be a great way to get an unforgettable reaction from your sweet-little-old-lady grandmother, too. 4.5 out of 5.
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Great review…I’m going to HAVE to read this now…!
I agree – great review. It sounds like a book I’ll have to put in my stocking this Christmas.
OMG too funny. I’ve never read any of his stuff. This would make a great gift for a gift exchange. I love the cover too.
I loved SantaLand Diaries- I read it every Christmas the way some people read A Christmas Carol. Love it!
Great review. I can’t wait to get my hands on this new collection.
Oh I want to read this one lol! It will certainly be a different from the other books I plan to read and re-read in December.
[...] said it before, and I’ll say it again. I love David Sedaris. Naked was the first of his books I [...]