Playlet: A Nightmare before Christmas (including performance rights)

Anyone teaching English as a foreign language knows that Christmas in Britain is a popular theme in December. However, the texts on English Christmases tend to be bland or ‘twee’ and so, I decided to write my own description of Christmas with screaming kids, shrieking mothers-in-law and drunken husbands sneaking off to the pub. This text proved to be very popular with the majority of students although a few found it to be too cynical. I have incorporated this text into both my translation and my phonetics workbooks.