HOLIDAYS ON ICE collects six of David Sedaris’s most profound Christmas stories into one slender volume, perfect for use as a last-minute coaster or ice scraper. I winced at some of the insensitive terms he used but I kept reading because the stories were overall entertaining and I felt some of the language was still somewhat tolerated at the time he wrote the book.

Each of his four subsequent essay collections, Naked (1997), Holidays on Ice (1997), Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004), and When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008) have become New York Times Best Sellers. I was surprised to hear these people being described as retards and freaks, this is not something you expect to hear these days! Or the out of touch TV person who shows up to a church in Kentucky to boast and strut around about how better than them he is because he works in TV and has money and access to good doctors but because they’re a small town they all lower than him in every possible way but he’s there to give them a gift. I want: Helen has finally beaten her meth addiction; Gary finally decided to start paying that overdue child support. I prefer his more personal tales to his bizarre fantastical stories of death and destruction and general evil.

Along with such favorites as the diaries of a Macy's elf and the annals of two very competitive families, are Sedaris's tales of tardy trick-or-treaters ( Us and Them); the difficulties of explaining the Easter Bunny to the French ( Jesus Shaves); what to do when you've been locked out in a snowstorm ( Let It Snow); the puzzling Christmas traditions of other nations ( Six to Eight Black Men); what Halloween at the medical examiner's looks like ( The Monster Mash); and a barnyard secret Santa scheme gone awry ( Cow and Turkey). If the very thought of Christmas makes you want to run screaming for a wig or yarmulke, consider including David Sedaris's new and updated Holidays on Ice in your disguise kit. Several of his plays have been produced, and he is a regular contributor to ESQUIRE and Public Radio International's 'This American Life'.

The holidays bring out something truly special in David Sedaris, making this more a "best of" than a mere holiday book. So, if there is a costume involved, I tend not only to accept the leaflet, but to accept it graciously, saying, "Thank you so much," and thinking, You poor, pathetic son of a bitch. While it contained the cynicism I have come to expect from him, it seemed to overpower the humor a lot more than usual.The first short story/essay is one of the funniest I've ever read, then they get blacker and blacker - but still very funny. I protested that I hadn’t read anything by them or knew any of their work but my friend was like it’ll be fine.

Rather than acknowledging my mother was crazy (she had paranoid schizophrenia, which I didn’t know until my late teens), he said she was “nervous. There were only three stories in this collection that I didn't absolutely despise; Santaland Diaries, Dinah the Christmas Whore, and 6 to 8 Black Men were the only ones that were even remotely funny. Here is "Dinah, the Christmas Whore", in which the Sedaris family opens its heart to an unexpected, almost Mary Magdalene-like visitor. However, I think for me it is because this is a "collection" of assorted stories on a theme, rather than a whole book, which left me wishing I'd started with one of his more complete audiobooks.Everything this woman said, every phrase and sentence, was punctuated with a question mark and the interviewer never raised an eyebrow. Being deliberately unkind to people by telling lies or causing problems or confusion does not seem something I want to read about as being something that is fun and funny.

Sedaris's version of the holidays is a comfort in a world saturated with sentimentality during Christmas.I was a zombie so I shook my head, I had no creativity or humor in me at that moment, and I already wasn’t a person particularly excited to participate in things, to begin with. I want to put Christmas trees in every room of the house and bake and place myself firmly on The Good List. Sallie Mae sounds like a naive and barefoot hillbilly girl but in fact they are a ruthless and aggressive conglomeration of bullies located in a tall brick building somewhere in Kansas. Since several of the pieces were previously published, I judge this book could have been postponed until Sedaris came up with a complete new set of stories.