the Scottish Christmas Survival Guide: Twenty four days from tree going up to New Year steak pie

Other countries get a Christmas. Scotland gets a fortnight of hand to hand combat with catering.Twenty four days, one at a time, from the tree going up to the New Year steak pie. This is the field guide to surviving a Scottish Christmas with your sanity and your family intact, and it is very much not a guarantee on either.The tinsel wars. The Quality Street politics. The works night out you will not fully remember. The uncle who starts on the sherry at eleven in the morning and is asleep in a chair by two. And the bit on Boxing Day where somebody greets at the telly and everybody pretends not to notice.What's inside: - Twenty four entries, one to a page, running from the tree going up, through Christmas Day, into the days that have no name, and on to Hogmanay- A Festive Damage rating on every one, so you know what you are walking into- The works night out, the selection box economy, and why nobody in this country has ever finished a tin of Roses without an argument- A Scots glossary: thirty four words for the daftest fortnight of the year, each one marked living or heritage, so you know which ones folk actually still say- Auld Lang Syne, all five verses, with a plain translation of every line. Nae excuse for the second verse next year- Two quizzes, a Scottish Christmas bingo card, an official complaints form, and the things said in every Scottish house between the twelfth of December and the second of January- Original illustrations throughout- It ends, as all Scottish Christmases do, with a steak pieFor homesick Scots abroad, for anybody who married into a Scottish family and is still recovering, for folk hunting a Scottish gift that is actually funny, and for everybody who has ever been handed a tin of Quality Street and told to pass it on without taking the purple one.Fair warning: by Boxing Day you will recognise your own family in here.If you like the patter, there is more of it. I am SlammDunk Productions on YouTube, where 75,000 folk turn up for Scottish comedy, and the free Whit Did Ye Say? app has over 1,900 Scottish words spoken out loud by a real Scottish voice.Written by one Scottish lad from scratch. Aw the best, troops.