Hi everyone! I'm Jennifer from English with Jennifer, and I have a very special
holiday lesson for you. I've invited Emma from Pronunciation with Emma to join me.
Emma has her own YouTube channel for English language learners, and she's very
popular and very well-liked on Instagram. I'll let Emma say hi herself. Hello there. My name
is Emma, and I'm from the channel Pronunciation with Emma. I focus on
British pronunciation and accents. I also focus on some vocabulary, some grammar,
some slang, and idioms that are used in the UK. So if all of that sounds like
your cup of tea, then Jennifer should have left a link in the description.
Anyway, thank you, Jennifer, for inviting me on your channel. Today we're going to
talk about some traditions here in the U.K. related to Christmas. We do have
another video on my channel where we also talked about more traditions.
There will be a quiz at the end of my video as well. Hopefully, that is somewhere in the
description below, so go and check that out too.
As you can hear, Emma has lovely British English, and I think it's going to be
very useful for you to hear both our accents in this lesson. Learn with both
of us and become more confident about using English as a global language.
You can subscribe to both our channels. I'll put all our social media links in the
video description. We've planned an extra-special treat for you.
Emma and I are going to answer a few questions about the December holidays in this video.
Then for more language practice, you can go to Emma's channel
and watch another video with more Q&A. You'll get to learn about how we
celebrate the December holidays in the U.S. and in the U.K.
We'll be testing your listening skills. How well do you understand American and
British English? We'll see. At the end of this video, I'll quiz you to see how much
you can remember, so listen closely. Okay?
So, I'm not actually a big fan of Christmas films and Christmas movies.
We call them films here in the U.K, but there is one that comes to mind, and it's
The Nightmare Before Christmas. So The Nightmare Before Christmas is about Jack Skeleton,
and he kidnapped Santa Claus. I really liked it when I was child, and I
still like it now, which is quite unusual because normally our tastes change as we
get older. But no, I still enjoy it, and I think maybe one of the reasons why I
enjoy it so much is because it's quite unique.
It is a stop-motion animation. It is not like a drawing animation. It doesn't use
real people, so it's really quite different and quite unusual and very dark,
so I definitely recommend it.
I love holiday movies and if I had more time,
I'd probably spend quite a lot of it on the couch with my kids. We've seen Home
Alone more than a dozen times. Polar Express, How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
A Christmas Story...those are also some of our favorites. I have a soft spot for
Miracle on 34th Street. It's a classic. But my personal favorite is a romantic
comedy with Sandra Bullock. While You Were Sleeping.
So one typical tradition that we had in my family when we were growing up was
that my mum would put up the tree twelve days before Christmas and take it down
twelve days after because if she didn't, she believed it would be bad luck. And that's
quite common here in the U.K., so we used to help her put up the tree. I have two
younger brothers, and so we used to help her out, and we would put the tinsel and
the lights and the baubles on the tree with her.
I always look forward to putting up the Christmas tree. We have an artificial one, and we carefully assemble
it one branch at a time. We play Christmas music while we do that.
The best part is putting on all the ornaments because each one is
connected to a memory.
Chocolate. It's the obvious one, I think. But I also associate certain types of
biscuits. So, for example, I associate shortbread, which is a very buttery
tasting biscuit from Scotland, and we have that in England as well. That's very
typical at Christmas and very easy to make as well, but, yes, chocolates and
sweets. Those are the biggest things I associate with Christmas. Also, meat and
nut roasts along with vegetables. That's very typical as well.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a sweet tooth. I love to bake around the holidays, and for me,
Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without cookies. When the kids were
little, they left milk and cookies on the table for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve,
and Santa always left a thank-you note.
So how well did you understand? How much can you remember? We'll see. Take a short quiz.
Question 1. Which one of us enjoys holiday movies more, Emma or me?
The answer is me. All right. That was easy, so here's a follow up question.
Emma mentioned one holiday movie she enjoys. Do you remember which one it was?
The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Question 2. When did Emma's mother put up the Christmas tree?
Do you remember her tradition?
She put it up twelve days before Christmas.
And she took it down when?
Twelve days after Christmas.
Question 3. Which holiday food do we both like?
Cookies! We just call them by different names.
Emma calls them biscuits. I say cookies, but they're still the same
sweet baked good. Here in the States, we have so many different kinds of Christmas cookies.
That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed listening to Emma and me
talk about how we celebrate the December holidays. Remember to head over
to Pronunciation with Emma here on YouTube for more listening practice.
We made another holiday Q&A video for you. I'll put the link in the video description.
You can subscribe to Emma and follow her on Instagram. It's good
practice to train your ears to hear different accents. You should become
comfortable listening to either American or British English. Again all her social
media links will be in the video description. If you enjoyed this lesson,
please like and share this video. As always, thanks for watching and happy studies!
And of course, happy holidays to you all!
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