Twist Your Dickens is a VERY funny take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We asked the women in the cast (all Second City alumnae) about their own favourite holiday traditions, and the best presents they ever got.
Karen Parker
SDTC: Describe your family’s typical holiday scene.
Allison Price: My Mom is absurdly good at all things Christmas, so generally that morning is something straight out of a holiday spread in Canadian Living magazine. I wake up to the smell of some sort of fresh baking and Handel’s Messiah playing in the background. We eat whatever delicious thing she’s made warm out of the oven and open presents. After that we normally have a second, equally delicious breakfast and then load into the car and drive out to my aunt’s place just north of Collingwood. Then more food and games and a huge gift exchange, the kind where everyone piles their wrapped mystery package in the middle and then one by one open and swap (steal) from each other. It’s less important to end up with a good gift than it is to bring the gift that everyone wants bad enough to fight over. We’re a competitive, silly bunch and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sarah Hillier: Pretty casual, very warm, cuddly animals all over the place and LOTS of food!
Karen Parker: Starts off jolly, quickly progresses to argumentative, quickly followed by disappointed, and ends with someone drunk and in tears. Kind of like all my dates.
Holly Wyder: A delicious turkey dinner to stuff the belly and sitting on the couch with hot cocoa watching Santa Claus!
Sarah Hillier
What is your favourite holiday tradition?
AP: I love Christmas Eve. We pretty much always have spaghetti for dinner and then head to this crazy light show in the park. It walks a fine line between cheesy commercialism, religious pageantry and winter wonderland. A community centre serves bad hot chocolate. Little kids waddle around in snowsuits. Rita MacNeil Christmas albums play on repeat. We’ve been going ever since I was a kid and it never ceases to delight me.
SH: Every Christmas Eve we order Pizza Hut! We have turkey and all that on Christmas Day but on Christmas Eve it’s all about Pizza Hut!
KP: Gravy.
HW: Heading to the farm and going ski-dooing with the cousins across the farmland with a sled attached to the back.
Allison Price
Best Christmas present you ever received?
AP: One year my brother and I got Talkboy Tape Recorders, the kind Macaulay Culkin uses in Home Alone 2 to outwit Tim Curry and the whole staff at the Plaza Hotel. We used that thing to create our own “radio shows” and of course, for pranks. I’m sure my parents lived to regret that purchase, but I basically thought it was the coolest gift ever.
SH: My dad told us the original iPod Mini was gonna be too expensive but then surprised all three of us (my two brothers and I) with them on Christmas Day. We all lost our minds and from that day on he was named the King of Christmas!
KP: A toss up between a Cabbage Patch doll named Yvette or an ATARI.
HW: I’m always a fan of personalized photo albums. But when I was twelve I got Pokemon Red for Gameboy and didn’t stop playing it for days.
Holly Wyder
Twist Your Dickens runs at the Toronto Centre for the Arts (5040 Yonge St) from December 2 to 30, 2016. Get tickets here.
Follow Us On Instagram
