When radio was king, Norman Corwin's The Plot To Overthrow Christmas was a perennial holiday favorite, not unlike A Charlie Brown Christmas or How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in the TV era. In his great broadcasting history The Golden Web, Erik Barnouw calls the play "a holiday prank" with "one foot in the world of international plots, conspiracies, and coups d'état"; with the other foot, "it was an experiment in—and a playful comment on—the radio medium."
The setup is simple: Mephistopheles wants to destroy Christmas once and for all, because "as long as this continues to be/The race of man will not belong to me." So he gathers a gallery of rogues worthy of the jury box in The Devil and Daniel Webster and asks them for ideas. Caligula proposes poisoning Christmas candies. Simon Legree suggests bribing Congress to ban Christmas. My favorite idea comes from Emperor Nero, who declares:
