Milk for Santa Claus

A couple of weeks ago, just in time for the holiday season, the association that represents the milk producers of the province of Québec came out with a hilarious commercial to promote its product. The stars of the 30-second ad are a pair of sincere and determined parents who use their limited English skills to preserve the magic of Christmas for their son. They stretch those skills to the limit, manufacturing tortured Frenglish sentences to keep their son from understanding their holiday strategizing.

The actors who play the couple play their roles perfectly. Any parent who has sought to hide the obvious from their children will identify with their predicament. Any student who has failed to master a foreign language will identify with their struggle.

Even if you do not understand French, I think you’ll appreciate the acting:

In the follow-up commercial, their struggle to master the English language turns pedagogical as they rehearse their holiday lines during a cours d’anglait. For my non-French-speaking readers, the misspelling of the word anglais makes for a clever play on words: anglais (English) + lait (milk) gives us anglait. Now, if they could just remember the English term for Père Noël!

The Producteurs de Lait du Québec have now come out with more commercials in the same vein. You can see them on YouTube. Anyone up for a cours de Lait’spagnol?

19 thoughts on “Milk for Santa Claus”

  1. Ahahaha! That’s a funny one! My wife and I are using the English language strategy too for keeping the Holidays magic! Our daughter is 6 and we both know that it could be the last year for Santa Claus believing. Have a great Holiday with your family Neil. It’s always good to hear from you. Keep posting!

  2. Always good to hear from you Neil. Many thanks for your latest post. Wishing you a happy Christmas and a healthy 2021.

  3. Hello Neil. With these post and short videos, you gave me an ultimate occasion to practice my English in 2020. I wish you all the best for 2021, especially health of course, but also hundreds of tours with many tourists coming from all around the world! See you…

  4. I’m an happy folower of your post, these one showing the truly educated Quebec parents talking Frenglish like me ! 🙂 also, the kid has an intelligent part in the dialog.
    Alors un grand merci pour tout ! et tes blogs depuis mars 2013, c’est vraiment de l’endurance et de l’observation pertinente. Je profite de cette fin d’année inouïe en rebondissement dans la sphère touristique mondiale, pour te souhaiter une belle fin 2020 et une formidable Nouvelle Année, une belle saison autant pour toi que ta famille en santé, le reste suivra.
    Cordialement db

  5. Love this commercial…Thanks Neil for your always up-dated articles ans posts…much appreciated…and best wishes for the holiday season to you and your loved ones… Alain Bernier

  6. Really fun Neil. Thank you to put us a smile back of our mask. I wish you a really nice Christmas Time and many nice tours and Health for 2021.

  7. Normand Tremblay

    So funny!
    “I am tired”, in french, is, “ Je suis fatigué “.
    Spoken from an english speaking person it often sounds like “Je suis fat and gay”.
    Always bring good laugh.

  8. Been trying to learn French since taking one of your tours of Quebec City and Ste. Ann about 6 years ago. Your posts and these ads make it much more fun. Just wish more people in my area spoke French. Thanks so much your articles are very enjoyable and enlightening. (Maintenent, Je parle a peu Francais.

  9. That a great bit of relief as we in Scotland have the continuing near lockdown to (try to) prevent the spread of the awful new variant of COVID-19. No visitors to the house except for the day of the 25th and nearly everything shut.

    And then we have the looming “No Deal” Brexit. What a buffoon we have for a Prime Minister.

    When will it end? Though at least the unspeakable Trump has been sent packing.

  10. I love this!!! It was much-needed levity during such a challenging time with this unwanted guest of COVID refusing to go quietly.

  11. J’ai adoré…. Merci pour ces leçons de langues secondes….tout croches qui font sourire et pour ton « post » dans un anglais impeccable qui m’a permis d’apprendre le mot « predicament »
    Joyeuses Fêtes…différentes et à bientôt j’espère

    Odette

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