Dina, the Christmas Whore

Journal: Dina, the Christmas Whore

"Dinah, the Christmas Whore" is an autobiographical essay by David Sedaris in which David learns that his sister Lisa has been holding out on him. Up until this point, David thought of her a boringly ordinary person like everyone else except him. Yet on this evening, her actions result in their having the most unique visitor in their kitchen, setting them apart from all the other homes celebrating Christmas.

At their father's suggestion, David Sedaris and his sister Lisa both gain after-school employment at different cafeterias in Raleigh shopping centers. David is a dish washer and his sister is a steamer. During his intellectually unengaging work hours, David contemplates his dream of producing and starring in a television show called, "Socrates and Company," about his travels with a monkey named Socrates. In his imagination, each episode ends with his final thought, a profound statement about life that suddenly occurs to him as a result of that day's adventures. He tries to draw epiphanies from many of the released felons who work in the kitchen on parole, but finds them to be unmotivated and unmotivating. My favorite part was just in the beginning when he was talking about the show he came up with about him and the chimp. "The eyes, Socrates, go for the eyes!" (Sedaris 74) I can so picture a boy dreaming that up.

As the holiday season approaches, David gets much busier at the cafeteria and realizes that he is as insignificant to the cafeteria's customers as they are to him. As the holiday season advances, so does his impatience. On Lisa sister's eighteenth birthday, she receives a call from a grown woman, who identifies herself "a goddamned friend" (Sedaris 78) and she takes David on a late-night ride downtown to rescue her very unlikely friend from her abusive boyfriend. The story takes place when Lisa has decided to bring her friend, who is also an older female co-worker from The Picadilly Cafeteria, home for Christmas. The Picadilly happens to hire a lot of former convicts to bus tables, mop floors, and help in the kitchen. At this point in the story, the Sedaris family has gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to meet Lisa's new friend.

Sedaris' family makes several funny appearances throughout the story. In the story Sedaris shows how he reacts to his mother: "Whore. That lady is a whore." "I'm not certain what reaction I was after, but shock would have done quite nicely." Instead, my mother said, "Well, then, we should probably offer her a drink" (Sedaris 87). This is a surprising account of David learning his mother response towards his sister's friend who actually was prostitute. He realized that "We were the only family in the neighborhood with a prostitute in our kitchen" (Sedaris 90). Sedaris realizing that his mother