"Season's Greeting to Our Friends and Family!!!" is a comedic story written by David Sedaris, and published in his collections "Barrel Fever" and "Holidays on Ice".

The story takes the form of a Christmas letter from a seemingly typical middle class house wife, describing a normal family that keeps on getting less normal. Most of those problems are centered around a Vietnamese step-daughter that she didn't know she had, named "Khe Sanh", fathered by her husband while he was in Vietnam. Also, another one of her daughters had a baby born addicted to cocaine, and the facade of middle class life is tumbling down around her. The story is 23 pages, and other than the ending, it is pretty much variations on the two items mentioned above.

David Sedaris is a popular comedy writer, and this is from early in his career, and unlike much of his writing, it is not autobiographical. But I still think the story is somewhat indicative of Sedaris' styles and themes.

I didn't like this story. I found it somewhere between dull and offensive. For comedy, offensive can be excusable. Dull and offensive is not. The basic premise of the story is that middle class life is not always what it seems, which both as a subject for social commentary and humor was well worn, even 20 years ago when this was written. There really was no new angle placed on this, and the only way it really tries to be interesting was to get more morbid and "shocking" as it went on. Oh, and a bit racist as well.

David Sedaris is very popular in some corners, and it might be in spite of occasionally writing flat pieces like this, or it might be because much of his audience is still impressed with heavy-handed social commentary like this. Alternatively, I just don't "get it".

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