Second City's Holidazed & Confused: Ho-larious! The holidays can be a funny season, what with open slays and laughing all the way. But not only is this time of year funny ha-ha (and funny ho-ho), but funny-peculiar as well.In one of the sharper bits of satire in the Second City's zippy new yuletide revue, the comically crisp Kyle Dooley auditions for a mall-based Santa position. Except that he's German, and so his idea is to embody a Krampus instead of Kringle. Krampus is a cloven half-demon beast who dunks kids" heads into wash basins and beats the hell out of them - all in the name of frightening them into nice behaviour. If they're naughty, he'll drag them down to the underworld (or, in his case, a particular corner of hell known as a food court.) Children are scared straight; their recompense, Christmas presents. "It's very good for consumerism," Krampus tells his prospective boss convincingly. And so, the improved society that upright moral behavior might foster is not valued as its own reward - so much for being good for goodness's sake. The conflictions and frustrations of the holidays are not lost on the Second City troupe, whose sketches, while often ho-larious, touch on the truth that Christmas is for children, with adults left to navigate the season without going plum mad in the process. With that in mind, let's see Holidazed & Confused as one of the better respites and distractions around this year. Moreover, let's see as much as possible of young Kirsten Rasmussen, the Bethlehem-level star of the show. She appears to be one of those great, elastic entertainers that Second City has been producing since the days of Gilda Radner past. She's a hit as the kid who is literally potty-mouthed - she riotously swears up a storm in the bathroom - and showed range and acting chops as a grandmother who had given up on Christmas. "Did you downsize that song off the Internet?" she adorably asks her thoughtful grandson (Devon Hyland, known for his Kraft Dinner commercials). He dances to an old song with his granny, a gesture which persuades her that grown-ups can still have cheerful moments themselves. As a whole, the six-member cast showed up well with a couple of tight improvisation bits. Audience interaction and improv comedy being sink-or-swim stuff, these players more than held their heads above water. The flair for winging it showed up in the final sketch, a send-up of Frank Capra's chestnut It's a Wonderful Life. You know the story - a despondent fellow wishes he had never been born, until an angel shows him how much he's contributed. When the lights came up and after the players accepted their applause, a cast member let the audience know about the Gilda's Club charity, named for the comedian who died of ovarian cancer in 1989. "We've raised over $130,000," the crowd was told. Better to give than to receive, then - doing good for the sake of doing good. And I do believe the generously funny Second City people have earned their wings once again. The Second City's Holidazed & Confused runs until Jan. 1.