More Wit and Whimsy for the Holidays
Christmas time and the livin’ is stressful! Elves are jumpin’ and the holiday neuroses are high. You need some good theme-relevant reads to take a break from all of the seasonal insanity.
Start with David Sedaris’s Holidays on Ice,
a collection of essays to appeal to both your inner grinch and your inner Santa. Included are stories about Sedaris’s job as a Macy’s elf, and a holiday letter that goes way off topic. His essay “Six to Eight Black Men” addresses the cultural differences between America and other parts of the world when it comes to the celebration of Christmas. I’ve heard him do this story on CD, and it’s fall-down-funny hilarious.
Follow up with a helping of Connie Willis’s Miracle and Other Christmas Stories.
After Sedaris, you’ll appreciate this author’s sweet but irreverent tone. Willis is an author of wonderful science fiction stories, and she absolutely adores Christmas. She weaves her two loves into some of the most original holiday stories ever published. There’s a murder mystery, a tale of alien invasion, and an homage to the author’s favorite movie, “Miracle on 34th Street.” (Willis detests “It’s a Wonderful Life,” by the way, and that movie takes a number of funny hits in the story.) All of them delivered with good will and a dose of humor.
OK, I’ve given you bitter (Sedaris), and I’ve given you sweet (Willis).
Don’t forget an essential course on Christmas Eve: Clement C. Moore’s The Night Before Christmas. Be sure and find an edition that has the correct name for the seventh reindeer. (It’s Donder, folks, not
Donner!) After all, your nerves will be really frazzled by then, and the last thing you need is an argument over a reindeer’s name!
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