WHAT TO SAY at Christmas Common Expressions
Hey there! I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!
So Christmas is just around the corner and
in this lesson, I’ll focus on some common English
expressions and vocabulary
that you’ll hear at this time of year.
The Christmas holiday is celebrated so differently
around the world.
For some, it’s a religious celebration. For others,
it’s just a cultural celebration but an important one.
Most of you know that here in Australia we celebrate
Christmas a little differently.
It’s not the quintessential white Christmas
that you imagine.
It’s summer, it’s lovely and warm.
We spend days at the beach over our holidays
and the food that we eat is a little less traditional.
We eat prawns and salads and cold ham and
all of those delicious things.
All of my students in South America,
Southeast Asia and even parts of Africa.
I mean, we definitely do things a little differently
down in the southern hemisphere, right?
If you celebrate Christmas in summer,
I want to hear about your traditions in the comments.
How do you and your family celebrate?
What’s your favourite thing to do on Christmas Day?
Now for those of you who celebrate a more traditional,
white Christmas, you probably can’t even imagine
Christmas in summer, right? A hot Christmas.
It must sound completely crazy to you.
And if you don’t celebrate Christmas at all,
you’ve probably got another similar holiday
where you eat lots of delicious food with the people
that you love and maybe you share gifts with each other
so I’d love to hear about your celebrations as well.
If you’ve got time, add a quick description
into the comments, I’d love to read about it.
But back to Christmas.
There are some tricky words and expressions that are
used at Christmas time in English
so in this lesson we’ll focus on how you can
say them confidently.
You’ll practise how to wish someone a Merry Christmas.
You’ll find out what a Kris Kringle is and
I’ll help you to get in the Christmas spirit.
I’m sure that you’ve heard this greeting before,
it’s probably the most
famous Christmas expression there is.
But so often, it’s mispronounced by my English students
‘merry’ could be a little tricky for you if your native
language is Thai, Vietnamese or another
Asian language, because of that /r/ consonant sound.
So with the consonant, make sure that the tip of your
tongue is not touching anything
and that it’s pushed up in the middle and pulling back
from the front of your mouth.
The edges of your tongue can touch the top inside teeth
Now ‘Christmas’ is also tricky because the T is silent.
Most native speakers just simply say
And the letter A here is unstressed
so you’ll just hear it as the schwa sound.
It’s flat, it’s low in pitch.
If you’re not sure what the schwa sound is,
then check out this lesson here that I made all about it
but let’s try ‘Christmas’ together
Forget about that T sound in there,
you need to be a little lazy with the A.
Listen to the intonation there.
In most English-speaking countries, you’ll hear
‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Happy Christmas’.
Both are good options.
The night before Christmas is also an important day.
Depending on the culture, some people actually eat their
big family Christmas meal on Christmas Eve
and not on Christmas Day.
And some cultures open their presents
on Christmas Eve.
But more importantly,
for many children around the world,
Christmas Eve is the time when Santa Claus comes
flying to their house with his sleigh and his reindeer
to leave Christmas presents under the Christmas tree.
It’s a big night and it’s also hard to pronounce.
The consonant sound at the end of ‘Christmas’
links to the vowel sound at the start of ‘Eve’
and the two words are usually pronounced as if
they were one big word and remember
don’t pronounce that T.
And don’t forget that final /v/ consonant at the end.
What on earth is that?
Well let’s start with Santa,
you probably know him, right? This guy.
Also known as Santa Claus.
Yeah, in English that word is pronounced
just like ‘claws’ and ‘clause’.
He’s also known as Father Christmas.
He’s known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick
and Kris Kringle in some countries
and of all of those names,
I think the hardest to pronounce is Kris Kringle.
So saying two words that begin with the /kr/
consonant cluster it’s kind of like a tongue twister.
It really makes the muscles in your mouth work.
And don’t forget that tiny little schwa sound there
in the syllabic consonant.
So it’s an unstressed second syllable.
In some accents it’s syllabic
otherwise there’s a tiny little schwa sound in there.
This one might take a little bit of getting used to
but there’s no time like the present.
Repeat after me.
It’s like a tongue twister. How fast can you say it
without messing it up?
Now for me in Australia, Kris Kringle is actually
an activity played at Christmas time
especially amongst big groups of friends
or colleagues at work.
So it’s a gift-swapping game. It’s quite popular.
You write everybody’s name on a small piece of paper
and put it into a hat or a bucket.
Then you choose one of the pieces of paper
without looking
and the person on this piece of paper is the one that
you have to buy a Christmas present for.
So you can’t tell anyone who you’re buying
your present for and there’s usually an amount of money
that everyone agrees to spend so the presents
are all of the same value.
And there’s actually a lot of different variations
on this game depending on where you are in the
English-speaking world.
It might also be called Secret Santa.
If you’re in America, I think it’s called Yankee Swap
or White Elephant, so there are lots of games where
everyone brings a present to a party and then you know
it’s a bit of fun sharing those presents around.
But sometimes there’s slightly different rules,
so if you do ever get invited to one of these
games at Christmas,
then make sure you just double-check the rules.
Now that we’re on the topic of presents and gifts,
do you have anything special on your
Christmas wish list this year?
We usually exchange gifts at Christmas time and your
wish list is a list of all of the things
that you hope to receive.
Now most commonly this is done by children,
particularly because they write their list of gifts
they want to receive from Santa.
Now I’m wondering if you have a Christmas wish list.
If you do, what’s on it?
For me, I would really like a pretty beach umbrella
and some new beach chairs,
that’s what’s on my Christmas list.
Fingers crossed that Santa sees that this year.
So this is a pronunciation nightmare
if you have trouble with the
and sounds.
For such a short phrase it’s actually pretty tough to say
especially at the ends of these words.
So for the sound, your lips need to flare outwards.
And your tongue is pulling a little back
but your teeth are not quite touching
and of course, it’s an unvoiced sound
so the air is pushing through your mouth.
The -st consonants at the end of ‘list’
might also be tricky for you because it’s a
cluster of consonants.
So the /s/ the /t/ sounds need to come together, right?
So you can probably make those sounds separately
but what about if you push them together?
Make sure that I can hear that T, please.
I want to hear that air stop.
Okay now put it all together.
That’s another tongue twister
for you to practise this week Christmas!
Challenge yourself to say that as many times
as possible without messing that up!
Now you might also hear people saying that they are
in the Christmas spirit.
Someone who is in the Christmas spirit is feeling
excited and really happy about the holidays,
excited about seeing friends and family and
decorating the house and planning celebrations.
So you can use this expression when someone is
doing an action that’s particularly generous or giving
like if a colleague brought some mince pies
to share with everyone at work to celebrate Christmas.
What a generous gesture!
You could say “You’re in the Christmas spirit!”
If you don’t know what mince pies are, I made a video
about it here a couple of Christmases ago.
Now since Christmas ends in the /s/ consonant,
the same sound that ‘spirit’ starts with,
then you can link those two sounds together
so the whole phrase sounds more like one word.
This sounds like Christmas spirit.
So those two consonant sounds, because they’re the
same, we don’t need to pronounce them twice.
They just pull together.
But what if you’re not in the Christmas spirit?
I’m sure some of you might know someone who
can be quite grumpy at Christmas. They don’t really like
that time of year. They don’t like Christmas
and we call those people Scrooges
in an affectionate way. A Scrooge.
So the word ‘Scrooge’ is actually the name of a
really grumpy man in a famous Christmas story called
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
In the story, the main character, Scrooge, hates
everything about Christmas and he does his best to
avoid all of the celebrating,
all of the happiness of the holidays.
Now over time, it’s become really common to call
anyone who is anti-Christmas, who doesn’t really like
Christmas, a Scrooge.
Are you a Christmas Scrooge?
It’s okay, you can admit it!
Sometimes I’m a bit of a Scrooge.
So to say this word is a little challenging.
It’s an invented name so it’s a bit of a strange word
but you’ll hear it all the time at this time of year.
Make sure you practise the /sk/ consonant cluster
on its own before you even think about adding
the rest of it.
So hear that sound tapping at the back of my mouth
playing with that air as it’s coming through.
Then you can add
So there’s that sound.
Everything’s pretty tight in my mouth there.
So we end up with that
shape from the vowel sound.
So then you need to add the consonant sound
like in ‘jam’
Now that you can say the name, you can tell someone
“Come on! Don’t be such a Scrooge!”
Remember, it’s usually meant as an affectionate insult,
if that’s possible. It’s not really meant to be rude.
Usually people who are Scrooges are
completely okay about it, they accept it.
So do you know anyone who’s a Christmas Scrooge?
Maybe don’t name them in the comments
but share your stories about them if you want.
We already know that ‘merry’ is a synonym for happy
so it can also mean lively, cheerful and even
a little bit drunk. You’re happily drunk.
So when it comes to Christmas parties and celebrations
usually the more the merrier.
The more people that come, the happier
and the more fun the event will be.
You can use this expression to say everyone’s welcome
and although this expression is a way
to invite people to a Christmas party,
especially to say, you know,
bring your friends and family too
but this expression is common not only at Christmas.
You can use it at any time when you’re inviting people
to join in an activity.
Everyone’s welcome.
So let’s say this one a few times together.
Both of these words are unstressed, so they reduce
down and become the schwa sound.
The other words are content words. They’re stressed
and we hear them really clearly.
Stress that vowel sound there.
In my accent, you don’t hear the
consonant sound at the end.
Well hopefully this lesson helped you to get
in the Christmas spirit.
In English-speaking countries
and in lots of other countries around the world,
this is such a special time of year.
So if you’re celebrating
I wish you a very Merry Christmas!
Now stick around for some extra practice
coming up in just a moment but before we get there
make sure you subscribe to the mmmEnglish family
here on YouTube, if you haven’t already.
The more the merrier!
Click that red button right there.
Now let’s go practise!
Hi.
Hey!
What are you up to?
I am just finishing some last-minute
Christmas wrapping.
Presents!
Yes a few last presents to wrap before the big day.
Who are your presents for?
Mostly for friends actually, I’m not spending Christmas
with my family this year so
most of these presents are for my friends.
This year I’m having a pretty quiet one actually.
I’m not going back to Melbourne. Normally I fly home
to Melbourne where all of my family lives.
This year I’m not. My family’s coming over to visit me
in Perth after New Year’s so
I’m just having a really quiet relaxed Christmas this year
and not doing a lot of the crazy running around
and preparing, organising everything that
usually happens.
Well normally I am back in Melbourne and my family,
I have quite a big family,
all of my cousins and my aunties and uncles
and my grandparents are usually there.
And so we have a big lunch or a big dinner and
sort of give each other presents and
it’s a really good opportunity to catch up because
now all of my cousins have grown up,
we’re all adults, we don’t see each other that much
so it’s a really great chance to catch up.
I’m actually really glad that you asked that question
because it’s one that comes up all the time
around this time of year, particularly in English-speaking
countries where everyone is celebrating Christmas
or at least everyone gets
time off work at that time of year.
So even if you’re not celebrating Christmas
or you don’t really, you know, believe in Christmas
and you don’t sort of spend time celebrating
at that time of year,
it’s still a time when you get days off work and you know
here in Australia, at least, it’s really great weather.
Everyone really makes the most of that opportunity to
you know, catch up, with family or friends
and that kind of thing.
So when you get asked this question:
“What are you doing at Christmas? or
“Have you got any plans at Christmas?”
It can be asked in so many different ways.
There are so many different
questions that can get asked
but actually, the answer to all of them
is exactly the same.
So when you get asked this question, it’s not so much
specifically what you’re doing on Christmas Day
even if, you know, you’re not actually celebrating.
It’s talking about this period of time
around the Christmas holidays so it could be
you know, from anywhere around the 21st of December
through to the 2nd or 3rd of January, depending on
you know, when the public holidays are.
This time of year, it’s because everyone’s got
time off work, they’re, you know, often going on holidays
or doing special things
whether they’re related to Christmas or not
so if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you know,
it’s easy to answer this question as well.
You can simply say
or
but we’re doing this instead or we’re going to visit family
or we’re taking advantage of the holidays
and we’re going to Italy.
Something like that.
So even if you don’t celebrate Christmas,
you can easily answer this question,
you just need to have a couple of ideas
at the ready.
Some of the things you might say are
where you’re going,
who you’re doing it with,
whether it’s friends or family,
whether it’s a big celebration or not, whether it’s
low key or you’re having a quiet one like me.
And also, you know, what your plans are,
what types of things you’ll be doing,
what activities you’ll be doing,
whether you’re staying at home, whether you’re
travelling to somewhere else.
So any of these ideas are things that you can talk about
when you answer that question
and if you’re like me this year
and you’re doing something a little different to what
you usually do then answering this question
by contrasting or comparing the way that you
usually celebrate with what you’re doing this year is
also the perfect way to answer this question.
So for me, I usually fly home and I visit my family
and we have a big Christmas celebration
but this year I’m having a quiet one
and my family are actually coming to visit me.
So it’s a little different and I can talk about the
difference in that answer.
So I’m curious,
what have you got planned this Christmas?
What are you doing with your family over the holidays?
I’m really interested to find out.
I’m sure we have completely different ways
of celebrating all around the world
but I want you to try and answer that question
using the tips and advice that I gave
during this little extra bonus section of this lesson
so try and tell me what you’re doing,
where you’re doing it, who you’re doing it with,
what you’re eating,
if you’re celebrating - particularly if you’re celebrating
in a religious way. If you’re not celebrating,
tell me what you’ll be doing instead
or what you usually do at this time of year.
I’m really interested to find out.
Well I hope that you enjoyed that lesson
and that you’ve got a few new expressions to use
this year at Christmas time.
If you enjoyed this lesson then make sure you subscribe
to the mmmEnglish channel by clicking that red button
just down there.
If you want to keep watching some more Christmas
related videos, I’ve got a few others right here.
So I’ll see you in the next lesson!