The Dysfunctional Family Christmas Songbook

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, if R-rated, parodies
Review: Every time I pick up this book, I laugh myself silly at the inventive and sometimes painfully true lyrics: "We must have a perfect Christmas"; "O, what a fight, the fists were really flying..."; "Silent wife, angry wife..."; "Away in a manger, is that where you dressed?" and more. And surprisingly, the simple piano accompaniment is not bad at all.

Call me over-protective, but this is not humor I intend to share with the younger ones. "Whose Child Is This?" and "Here I Come A-Borrowing" make me laugh hard, and the parodies do not diminish the beauty of the original carols for me. But I wonder how the originals might survive in young minds after learning these very funny, but sometimes racy lyrics. And I am not too keen on answering, in the setting of the holidays, some of the questions that this content would probably provoke.

Not all jokes I hear or tell are suitable for youngsters, nor do I think they have to be. Taken as grown-up humor, this little book is a marvelously effective antidote to the saccharine airs wafting through this "most wonderful time of the year".

Rating:
Summary: Just okay
Review: I read Lenore Skenazy's column in the NY Daily News; although she's no Dave Barry, she's fairly clever. Out of 19 songs I really only laughed out loud to 3 or 4. But for less than ten dollars, it's a good deal if you want to have a few chuckles over Christmas dinner.

Rating:
Summary: Just Like My Family Christmases...Only Funny!
Review: I thought this was such a great idea for a book, but I wasn't sure how it would sound to actually sing the songs. If you can get through them without laughing, you're doing better than I did! Really, Really fun for the whole...Okay, for MOST of the family!

I saw a concert in New York that featured opera singers singing these songs, and that convinced me to buy the book for my family sing along. Loads of fun.