Holidays are always a time we all look forward to, but over the years we have all 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 discuss the different types of humor found in his stories and how he presents these stories with two different approaches. First, I would like to talk about “Christmas is Giving,” which is an example of a story in which he created fictional characters. In my opinion, this story was certainly the most absurd, which is why I found it comical. Since it wasn't a realistic story, it was hard to pity the families it created. What I found interesting was that it 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 ultimately leads to their deaths, and a comedy because of the random and unexpected events that I will show later. This story begins with a family who lives in a luxurious neighborhood and is well aware of their superiority in the community. They owned all the newest, most expensive, and most useless items, like an “electric shovel” or a “freestanding vacuum cleaner” (Sedaris 95). They led an extravagant lifestyle that was amplified during the holidays: “After opening the presents, we would sit down to a sumptuous banquet, feasting on every imaginable variety of meat and pudding. When one of us was full and felt uncomfortable, we would stick a silver chopstick down our throat, vomit, and start eating again” (Sedaris 96). In the early parts of the story, I would laugh because of the absurdity of some of the things they would do. This clearly shows...... middle of paper ......a character, we saw that he was real so we pitied him and told his misfortune because they were more realistic. He was able to evoke more pity with "Santa's Journals" and "Us and Them" than in "Christmas Means Giving" because both were real experiences and one was just an imaginary story invented. I would consider the whole book anecdotal as it was a series of stories in which he was able to spot certain stereotypes or elements of society that are more prevalent during the holiday season. It shows the negative side of the holidays when we are normally used to happy endings with the perfect family on Christmas Day.BibliographyMorreall, John. Comic relief: a global philosophy of humor. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print. Sedaris, David. A vacation on ice. 2nd ed. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2008. Print.