Satan is an anagram of Santa

Dave Cross's xmas season rant made me think of David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice, a wonderful collection of cynical and satirical christmas stories.

The first story is the classic Santaland Diaries which first debuted on NPR almost a decade ago and I laughed then and still laugh at it every year when they replay Sedaris himself narrating the story of his experience as an Elf at Macy's.

"In the afternoon we were given a tour of SantaLand, which really is something. It's beautiful, a real wonderland, with ten thousand sparkling lights, false snow, train sets, bridges, decorated trees, mechanical penguins and bears, and really tall candy canes. One enters and travels through a maze, a path which takes you from one festive environment to another. The path ends at the Magic Tree. The Tree is supposed to resemble a complex system of roots, but looks instead like a scale model of the human intestinal tract. Once you pass the Magic Tree, the light dims and an elf guides you to Santa's house. The houses are cozy and intimate, laden with toys. You exit Santa's house and are met with a line of cash registers.

We traveled the path a second time and were given the code 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 is an elf's job to calm them down and explain that it will take no longer than an hour to see Santa."

The next story is a brilliant send up of those awful holiday family newsletters you get from family and friends titled Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!. He even has the appropriate overuse of the "!" throughout the story for a touch of realism.

Dinah, the Christmas Whore is a priceless tale of Sedaris' sister bringing a whore home for christmas.

"Up and down our street the houses were decorated with plywood angels and mangers framed in colored bulbs. Over on Coronado someone had lashed speakers to his trees, broadcasting carols over the candy-cane forest he'd planted beside his driveway. Our neighbors would rise early and visit the malls, snatching up gift-wrapped Dustbusters and the pom-pommed socks used to protect the heads of golf clubs. Christmas would arrive and we, the people of this country, would gather around identical trees, voicing our pleasure with worn cliches. Turkeys would roast to a hard shellacked finish. Hams would be crosshatched with x's and glazed with fruit -- and it was fine by me. Were I to receive a riding vacuum cleaner or even a wizened proboscis monkey, it wouldn't please me half as much as knowing we were the only family in the neighborhood with a prostitute in our kitchen. From this moment on, the phrase "Ho, ho, ho" would take on a whole different meaning; and I, along with the rest of my family, could appreciate it in our own clannish way. It suddenly occurred to me. Just like that."

He rips apart the christmas theatre by children tradition in Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol and gives the sermon to christmas capitalism in Based on a True Story then delivers the final twist of the knife with Christmas Means Giving a tale of suburbia.

If you aren't big on the holidays and haven't seen this book then it's time you did. :)