David Sedaris' Holidays On Ice

1769 Words4 Pages

The Holidays are always a time we all look forward to but as the years go by we all have experienced the good and the bad. David Sedaris in Holidays on Ice, shared with us some of his personal experiences as well as fictional stories that took those experiences to a whole new level. In this essay, I will be discussing the different types of humor found in his stories and how he presents those stories with two different approaches.
First, I would like to speak about “Christmas means giving” which is an example of a story in which he created fictional characters. In my opinion, this story was definitely the most absurd, which is why I found it to be comical. Since it was not a realistic story, it was difficult to pity the families he creates.. What I found interesting was that this was a tragedy for the families in the story while as a reader it was a comedy. A tragedy because of the stubbornness of the families which lead the finality of them dying in the end, and a comedy because the random and unexpected events which I will show later on. This story starts with a family who lives in a luxurious neighborhood and were well aware of their superiority in the community. They all owned the newest most expensive and useless items such as an “Electric Shovel” or a “Riding Vacuum” (Sedaris 95). They lived an over-the-top lifestyle that was amplified during the Holidays, “After opening gifts we’d sit down to a sumptuous banquet, feasting on every imaginable variety of meat and pudding. When one of got full and felt uncomfortable we’d stick a silver wand down our throats, throw up, and start eating all over again” (Sedaris 96). Early parts of the story I would laugh because of how absurd some of the things they would do. This clearly shows...

... middle of paper ...

...a character, we saw to be true so we did pity him and relate to his misfortune because they were more realistic. He was able to evoke more pity with the “Santa Land “Diaries” and “Us and Them” than in “Christmas Means Giving” because the two were actual experiences and the one was just an imaginary, made up story. I would consider the whole book Anecdotal because it was a series of stories where he was able to pick out certain stereotypes or elements of society that are more prevalent during the Holiday Season. He shows the negative side towards the Holidays when we are normally used to only happy conclusions with the perfect family on Christmas Day.

Bibliography
Morreall, John. Comic relief: a comprehensive philosophy of humor. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
Sedaris, David. Holidays on ice. 2nd ed. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2008. Print.

Open Document