Christmas Letters from Hell: All the News We Hate from the People We Love

by Michael Lent

Who doesn't love to open the mailbox during the holidays and find a newsletter? Whether it's a juicy missive from a college roommate inadvertently revealing her husband's wandering eye, a self-congratulatory account of a cousin's rise to power at the local fast-food joint, or a mind-numbingly detailed account of a year's medical ailments (including photos) from a coworker, they're always entertaining.

Christmas Letters from Hell skewers holiday letters of all shapes and sizes, from the ones that come crammed with cheesy graphics or written from the perspective of the recently neutered family dog to those filled with stories of "perfect" family vacations that were clearly anything but. Here Santa uses his holiday letter to let the elves know that he'll be outsourcing to China effective immediately; a bipolar mom tells two very different versions of the year's events; and Osama bin Laden touches base with his high school host family in Minneapolis.

Christmas Letters from Hell serves up a steaming, savory blend of the holiday cheer, humor, and twisted truth in our well-intended attempts to stay in touch gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Genres: Christmas, Humor

132 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Michael Lent's new graphic novel is The Man Who Wasn't There published by Global Comix, comixology and Amazon Books.

Honored as a ‘Google Author’ in 2007, his writing/experience spans films, fiction and nonfiction books, biographies, graphic novels, animation, video games, and reality television. He has written nine books including On Thin Ice, published by Disney/Hyperion, based on the top-rated reality television series Ice Road Truckers. Research for this project entailed spending winter in the Arctic where Lent froze his pens off. His credits also include more than a dozen graphic novels and comics including Prey published by Marvel Comics, In 2014, Lent adapted into a graphic novel E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.”

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be horrible xmas letters that people had actually written to each other, ala awkward family photo style. Instead they were letters that were supposed to be funny from famous people or certain characters (your grandmother, a burner, Osama). I chuckled slightly once, in the 6 I attempted to read.

[DelGal · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book truly from hell. Note: this is NOT meant as a compliment. I mistakenly thought that these letters were going to be real and hellish, but alas, they're just the wordy, not funny blabbings made up by the author on stupid subjects like "Filling and loathing on Elm St", "Holiday Skinheads at Starbucks," and "Yuletide yearnings from Christopher Walken." Yuck!

[Crazy Uncle Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really tried. I read for longer than I probably should have waiting for the book to get funny. Then I read the "They Might Be Amish" joke and I decided I had just had enough. This book was a waste of time.

[Shelly Hammond · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were interesting little fictitious letters created in the mind of the author from an assortment of different people and things. It's creative and imaginative and the author has a very good writing style. Some of the stories/letters were very good and some fell a bit flat but all in all it was an okay book. It's rather short so it might be worth checking out if it peaks your interest.

[Faz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting this to be a compilation odd of letters from real people collected over the years. Instead it is a collection of fictional letters to Santa.

[Jason Bullett · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good roundhouse kick to the annoying round robins we get every year around Xmas-time, whether we want them in our mailbox or not.

[Amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's a very fast read! Some what funny, but It would have been funnier if they were really letters. Not letter from Santa, Global warming etc.

[Jim Dunn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a huge disappointment with only one redeeming letter, "Holiday in Oaxaca: How I Spent My Christmas Vacation."

[Tammy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a dark sense of humor but I just didn't think this book was funny.

[Elyse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some were funny, some were stupid, some I didn't get...lol. An okay collection of FICTIONAL Christmas letters. We were all hoping these would be REAL Christmas letters to really get the cringe going.