'The Tills Are Alive' opens the musical where Mr Nasty and Adolpho are pacing through the Salesburg Mall, urging the Tillers to work faster. However, one rebellious tiller cannot keep her mouth shut (literally) as she gets carried away in the festivities and sings for her customers. Unfortunately, Maria’s high spirits leads to Mr Nasty firing her and banning her from participating in the Mall Carol Competition. A reprise of
'The Tills are Alive' follows.
Luckily, Maria is not a lonely goatherd for long as she joins the McTrapp family as the children’s child minder. However, Maria has little time to teach the spoilt children the true meaning of Christmas but she undertakes the challenge and begins by singing
'The Meaning of Christmas.'
Maria opens the children’s eyes as she takes them to three very different environments in order to show them what is really important at Christmas. At the Got-thelott Mansion, the six McTrapp children feast their eyes upon a family where the children are unappreciative and spoilt; this is demonstrated during
'More, more, more.'
Appalled at the attitude of the Got-thelott children, the McTrapp family and Maria move onto the second house; the home of the Fairplays. Here, although the Fairplay children don’t receive a lot of presents, they are grateful for what they are given and demonstrate this as they sing
'Thank you for the day.'
In a drastic contrast, the McTrapp family move onto the Makenmend’s Flat where they witness a family who have nothing at all, but still remain in high spirits as they come together as a family to sing
'Merry Christmas Anyway.'
Having learnt a valuable lesson, the McTrapp family go head to head with Mr Nasty and his choir in the Mall Carol Competition. Although the Tillers sing
'Salesburg' successfully, nothing can beat the
'Sound of Christmas' sung by the McTrapps. Despite Mr Nasty’s best efforts at bribing Judge Cash-Mint to fix the results, even the Judge cannot turn a blind eye to the talented family and the McTrapps win the contest and give their presents to the Makenmends family. (In this musical, the McTrapps stick around to collect the prize!) Having learnt a valuable lesson, the reformed children and the cast come together to sing
'The Sound of Christmas' which ends the show perfectly.
Click the "Script & Songs" tab to read the script, look at the score and listen to the songs.
