It is pure Sedaris, straight from the NPR days. I do agree with other reviewers that other books are more interesting and humorous.

For me this goes in the Christmas files along with Christmas music that only comes out during one month of the year.

…David Sedaris was only famous for talking about Christmas. Santaland Diaries, heard on NPR stations across the country, is what gave him his first fame. This collection of stories came after his first book, Barrel Fever, and before the rest. This is back when he was still writing short stories, which he isn’t really known for anymore. This book has a couple of short stories and, like the short stories in Barrel Fever, they’re not really accessible to a wider audience. They’re dark – baby murder dark. Definitely not something everyone can appreciate. But pick it up, maybe you’ll like it. If you’re the sort of person who finds the idea of a theatre critic reviewing children’s holiday pageants bitterly, it’s worth a try.

(This book includes: Santaland Diaries, Season’s Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!, Dinah the Christmas Whore, Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol, Based Upon a True Story, Christmas Means Giving.)

Sedaris’ tale of working as one of Santa’s elves is hilarious, but the rest of these stories (especially the fictional ones) are nowhere near as funny.

Sedaris’ “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” was far superior and much funnier. The stories tended to be a little long and tedious (for short stories that is). Santaland Diaries was the best of the book, and I’m glad that it was at the beginning otherwise I might not have read continued reading it.

November 2004 – Book on tape from library. This is my least favorite David Sedaris book so far. The first 2/3 is great, his typical cynicism applied to the holidays. But he ends with two fiction pieces that are unpleasant and one of them was downright disturbing. One results in the horrid death of an infant and I failed to see the underlying message.

he writes how other people think; it’s brilliant.