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? Sure these essays and stories are misanthropic and sometimes course, filled with crude humor and bleak holiday cheer, but they are funny. So we have a dry reviewer eviscerating fictional Christmas School plays by being as outrageous about it as possible. The worst part is that after I have accumulated three hundred dollars I have to remove two hundred, fill out half a dozen forms, and run the envelope of cash to the drop in the China Department or to the vault on the balcony above the first floor. The first piece and the one which gives the book its title, is about the Christmas season that Sedaris spent working in Macy's as an elf.

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).Having relistened I find myself less tolerant of the casual way in which the author is happy to upset others for his own amusement, and by our listening, ours. One of the short stories is despairing on how absolutely awful school plays and pageants can be for people without a child to coo over in the performance. 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. My mother would read these saccharine missives with just the right amount of over-the-top chirpiness, and then would compose her own, much darker, Christmas form letter about our family.

I picture it to be the tallest building in that state and I have decided they hire their employees straight out of prison. I have never read a David Sedaris book before but I understand him to be a very popular comedian and I usually enjoy very popular comedians. 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. When my husband heard the essay, read by Sedaris, he laughed so hard he had tears running down his cheeks.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. And now I feel like I’ve got to find something else to bring whatever little festive cheer I had this year back. I miss his usual sense of strong 'voice' when reading these but since I'm running out of books of his that I haven't yet read, I'll probably be reading it through again sometime soon.