Ahhh, the joys of returning home. Coworkers are fine for office gossip and a lunch or two. Friends may come and go, but there’s nothing like your brother-in-law’s smarmy smile, the same stupid jokes from your cousins, the uncle who insists on having too much to drink, the aunt who knows what’s best for you and those special gifts (three toilet plungers) to remind you that it’s the holidays and you are home again, feeling just the way you felt when you were 11.
The authors of this book of cartoons know that feeling, too, and they have captured it so well that we laugh at moment after moment, and then we realize that it has happened to us and it will happen again this year.
One wants to be sentimental about the holidays. One wants to believe, as children believe in Santa Claus, that this year, things will be different.
But that is the great strength of the season: Nothing ever changes. In this world, where whirl is king, a few things are eternal. And that’s the problem. Read ’em and weep, with joy.
