ARFTCo’s Another Year Without a Witty Title Chicago Christmas Spectacular! Local playwrights reveal their twisted relationships with the holiday season in this cheeky Christmas variety show directed by Michael Buino. The brief skits run from off-color carols to a hard-hitting North Pole newscast and a choir-robed ensemble singing, “On the first day of change the Democrats gave to me . . . ” Highlights include “Gate B-28,” a hilarious airport rant Samantha Garcia spits at an unlucky gate attendant. And in Rosemary Newton’s witty parody, “Nancy Drew and the Clue in the Christmas Stocking,” Nancy and her pals solve a caper with dated catch phrases and questionable sleuthing. —Marissa Oberlander 
The Best Christmas Spectacular! Since its debut in 2008, the Best Church of God has remained one of the city’s funniest comedy outfits. Known for straight-faced fundamentalist worship services (“We read from the Bible so you don’t have to”), the BCOG has also staged mock protests, parodying Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates Fags” campaign by showing up at Westboro demonstrations with signs like “God Hates Signs, Exodus 20:4.” Director Michael Descoteaux, who’s also musical director for Second City E.T.C., says this will be the troupe’s most ambitious show to date, with brand-new sketches and songs focused on putting the Christ back in Christmas. Instead of wreaths, expect a crown of thorns. And the pagan fir will be replaced with a “giving tree” hung with messages detailing what BCOG players want Jesus to bring them. There’ll be an interpretive liturgical dance telling the Nativity story (“13-year-old Mary is raped by God,” etc.) and an animated segment depicting kids exploring the holiday traditions of other religions. Audience members can stick around afterward to get their pictures taken sitting on Jesus’s lap. —Ryan Hubbard
A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens’s classic holiday story.
A Christmas Carol The Goodman has roasted this Dickensian chestnut so long that audience members compare Scrooges (there have been seven of them) the way Bears fans rate quarterbacks. Now in his third year as the miserly curmudgeon, Larry Yando is at the top of my list. The spirits of Christmas ultimately nudge Yando’s Scrooge over to the Light Side, but before they show up Yando evokes the character’s great sin—his inability to see himself as connected to his “fellow passengers to the grave”—in the fearsome, strangled rage with which he spits, “I wish to be let alone!” William Brown’s spry staging incorporates just enough pyrotechnics to awe first-timers without losing the deeply humane heart of this deservedly beloved tale. —Kerry Reid
Ha-Ha-Holiday Show Improv show by “some of the top improvisers in Chicago with years of musical improv experience.”
It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play Like American Blues Theater’s It’s a Wonderful Life: Live at the Biograph, this American Theater Company show reimagines Frank Capra’s classic movie as a live radio broadcast, turning theatergoers into a “studio audience.” Jason Gerace’s production conveys the message of human interconnectedness underlying the story of despairing small-town businessman George Bailey, whose guardian angel saves him from suicide by revealing his impact on the lives of everyone around him. Kareem Bandealy delivers a solid impersonation of the original Bailey, James Stewart. The supporting actors—including Alan Wilder, doubling as the angel and as Bailey’s nemesis, mercenary banker Mr. Potter—deftly play multiple roles with spot-on changes in vocal characterizations. Although it never achieves the emotional impact of the ABT version, this is still a holiday charmer. —Albert Williams
Joffrey Ballet Performing The Nutcracker.
Mother Superior’s Ho-Ho-Holy Night This one-woman show created by Vicki Quade may give parochial-school graduates comedic flashbacks. Kathleen Puls Andrade plays Mother Superior, a no-nonsense nun helping Saint Gabriel’s church put on a Vatican-worthy holiday pageant. While spouting little-known facts about the origins of Father Christmas and what really happened at the Nativity, she dishes out discipline to her cowering audience. Luckily, she says, as she sends someone to stand in the corner, she forgot her ruler at home. The show’s humor depends on a participatory audience, so pray for a gum-chewing, back-talking, original-sin loving crowd. —Marissa Oberlander
The Nutcracker on Horseback Noble Horse Theatre presents The Nutcracker as performed by horses and riders from around the world. Reservations required.
A Nutty Nutcracker Christmas The popular Christmas story is performed from a “rockin’ contemporary adaptation” by Emerald City Theatre.
Raven: A Kwanzaa Tale Directed to children in grades 1-6, this play presents the principles of Kwanzaa through stories of early 20th century southern African-Americans. Presented by the People’s Jazz Theater.
The Santaland Diaries David Sedaris’s comic memoir about his stint at Macy’s playing one of Santa’s elves has lost a lot of its bite since he first read it on NPR in 1992. The snide commentary on Christmastime binge shoppers seems almost quaint in these recession-strapped times, and the mockery of pushy parents, clueless kids, obnoxious store managers, and eccentric Santa impersonators comes across as the verbal equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. But in this Theater Wit mounting of Joe Mantello’s 1996 stage adaptation, Mitchell Fain’s offhanded, seemingly improvised delivery and interaction with the audience give the script a much-needed freshness. Recalling Joan Rivers with his raspy voice and bitchy dishiness, Fain makes the show his own, transforming the monologue into a stand-up act. —Albert Williams
Silent Nightmare: A Christmas Dirge Having closed his North Pole operation on account of economic hardship, sadistic toy manufacturer Santa Claus has relocated to an abandoned GM plant outside Akron, and rebellion simmers among his much-abused elves. Meanwhile, a war hero with post-traumatic stress disorder has come home to find that his wife slept with everyone in town, elves included, while he was away. War and money woes are certainly topical themes this (and every?) holiday season, but the Annoyance Theatre’s new comedy neglects those subjects almost as soon as it raises them. Instead, you get a bunch of tasteless but still somehow boring gags about sex, violence, and sexual violence, spread out across two muddled plots that don’t even begin to converge. It’s sloppy, sour stuff. —Zac Thompson
Those Silly Reindeer Jack the Bird and LeeLee the Christmas Tree set out to find Holli the Snow Princess to save Christmas in this children’s musical presented by Lil Buds Theatere Company.
A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant Decades ago, grade-school kids performed on what is now the Next Theatre stage, so there’s a sense of deja vu as eight preteens enact Kyle Jarrow’s wicked parody-ritual. Kathryn Walsh’s staging doesn’t stop at mocking L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology’s celebration of cult-like “reason.” With its smug certainties and self-serving creation myth, this 65-minute pageant also spoofs Nativity reenactments and passion plays. Familiarity somehow defies contempt, though, and the show comes across as an ecclesiastical infomercial. A Red Orchid Theatre’s competing version delivers a much more equivocal ending, but both productions present salvation on the cheap—never more simplistic than out of the mouths of babes. —Lawrence Bommer