'All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth' was a novelty Christmas song written in 1944 by a Donald Yetter Gardener when he was a primary school music teacher in New York. Having asked his young class what they wanted for Christmas, he noticed that most of them were missing a front tooth and answered with a lisp. Half an hour was all it took him to write the song that was published in 1948 after he had performed it at a music teachers' conference. The record topped the American pop charts in 1948.
It is a dreadful thing to have toothache when the rest of your family and friends are celebrating Christmas and New Year. The problem is exaggerated when dental surgeries replace their normal opening hours with a reduced emergency service. This year, the two additional replacement bank holidays on December 27 and 28 will create a four-day break in addition to the New Year creating a three-day weekend that follows (that's four in Scotland).
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