From the reverential to the irreverent, the holiday arts this season offer a sleighful of surprises to suit just about any taste. We can’t think of a year when there’s been more on offer, complete with glistening Baroque concerts, roof-shaking choral events, and some truly twisted theatre offerings.

Here’s a guide to enjoying the season’s performances, whether you’re the kind of person who likes to wear Santa hats in public at this time of year, who needs to escape the mega-mall madness, or who simply can’t suppress that inner Scrooge.

MUSIC

Pacific Baroque Orchestra: Nachtmusik

(November 28 at Christ Church Cathedral and November 30 at Rose Gellert Hall, Langley)
For this season of darkness, our sparkling Baroque specialists serve up a little “night music”. The ensemble journeys from Luigi Boccherini’s Night Music of the Streets of Madrid through to Carl Heinrich Biber’s Night Guard Serenata. And it wouldn’t be complete without Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
Holiday vibe: Nocturnal old-school—as in centuries-old.

Chez Nous

(November 29 at Queen’s Avenue United Church at 2 p.m. and Ryerson United Church at 7:30 p.m.)
Elektra Women’s Choir puts its female-powered talents to old treasures like “The Huron Carol” alongside new compositions like Ola Gjeilo’s “Northern Lights”. A special program highlight is another premiere, that of “Winter’s Grace” by Edward Henderson (with words by poet Luci Shaw), a work in memory of the ensemble’s late director, Diane Loomer. Quintet A Touch of Brass adds backup, as does the Eric Hamber Women’s Chorale, bringing the number of voices to 80.
Holiday vibe: Angels we have heard on high.

Christmas with the Bach Choir

(December 7 at the Orpheum)
Imagine more than 400 voices joining together in traditional and modern carols, featuring everyone from the five-to-seven-year-olds in the Vancouver Bach Choir’s Piccolo Choir to the symphonic adult choir. Leslie Dala and Marisa Gaetanne take the helm for the event, which marks the 30th anniversary of the organization’s chorus-and-youth-choirs program. It was founded by former music director Bruce Pullan, who will conduct the young singers in a newly commissioned work written by Kathleen Allan in recognition of the occasion. Also on hand for the festivities: local brass quintet A Touch of Brass and organist Ellen Ay-Laung Wang.
Holiday vibe: As celebratory as lighting the Christmas tree.

VSO Traditional Christmas

(December 11 to 21 at various venues in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, including St. Andrew’s–Wesley United Church from December 11 to 14)
How popular is this beloved annual event, featuring thoughtful readings by Bard on the Beach’s Christopher Gaze and a range of sentimental and classical seasonal offerings from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under its associate conductor, Gordon Gerrard? Last year, it sold out at every one of its many locations. The UBC Opera Ensemble and EnChor add to the atmospherics of this reflective yet festive delight.
Holiday vibe: Chestnuts by an open fire.

Handel’s Messiah

(December 12 at the Orpheum)
The Vancouver Chamber Choir puts its considerable vocal power to the majestic choral masterwork. Jon Washburn conducts the choir, alongside the Pacifica Singers and Vancouver Chamber Orchestra, with special guest soloists Monica Whicher, Allyson McHardy, Benjamin Butterfield, and Stephen Hegedus.
Holiday vibe: Enough sonic rejoicing to shake the garlands off the rafters.

Music for the Winter Solstice

(December 12 at Heritage Hall)
Music on Main launches what is sure to become a new holiday tradition, with singers Caroline Shaw and Steve Maddock joined by pianist Rachel Iwaasa and the crystalline Couloir duo of cellist Ariel Barnes and harpist Heidi Krutzen. The programming? Think luminous contemporary work inspired by the long, cold, dark nights and the need to huddle together: Arvo Pärt, Alfredo Santa Ana, and Music on Main’s composer-in-residence Shaw.
Holiday vibe: A glowing candle burning against a moonless sky.

Musica Intima: A Christmas Story

(December 13 at the Langley Community Music School; December 15 at the Knox Presbyterian Church New Westminster; December 16 at the Ryerson United Church; December 19 at the St. Paul’s Anglican Church)
This year, the Juno-nominated vocal ensemble does more than just present an intimate mix of traditional seasonal songs with transcendent contemporary jewels by the likes of Richard Rodney Bennett, Craig Galbraith, and James MacMillan. It’s also collected stories, Vinyl Cafe–like, from its audience to weave into a narrative throughout the evening.
Holiday vibe: Gathering in a parlour to share personal Christmas tales amid gorgeous a cappella voices.

Van Django Bells

(December 16 at Presentation House, North Vancouver; December 18, Michael J. Fox Theatre, Burnaby; December 19, St. James Hall; December 20, Mount Seymour United Church, North Vancouver)
Here’s a way to make your holiday swing: the Van Django quartet’s Gypsy-jazz variety show is not your average mix of carols. Pop tunes, sing-alongs, and jazz standards get the Van Django treatment from violinist Cameron Wilson, guitarist Budge Schachte, guitarist/cellist Finn Manniche, and bassist Brent Gubbels.
Holiday vibe: Jingle jazz.

Winter Harp

(December 17 and 18, North Shore Credit Union Centre at Capilano University; December 20 at St. Andrew’s–Wesley United Church; December 21 at the ACT in Maple Ridge)
Clad in rich medieval attire, Winter Harp’s singers and musicians roll out everything from Celtic to Spanish holiday tunes amid a candlelit atmosphere you won’t forget.
Holiday vibe: Time-travelling back to a Renaissance church.

Chor Leoni: All is Calm

(December 19 to 21 at the Vancouver Playhouse)
In this extraordinary special event presented by our premiere all-men’s choir, Chor Leoni takes us back to World War I’s western front on Christmas Eve 1914. That night, something miraculous happened: a German soldier stepped into no man’s land singing “Stille Nacht”, and so began an unbelievable evening of peace and music. In this theatrical production to mark the centennial of the “Christmas truce”, actors tell the true story and the choir sings the songs of the soldiers who were there.
Holiday vibe: Peace on Earth, good will toward men.

Christmas Reprise XII

(December 20 at Holy Rosary Cathedral)
It’s no surprise that this hugely popular Yuletide matinee takes place in a historic church that sits just a block or two from one of the city’s biggest malls: the Vancouver Cantata Singers’ joyful offering of traditional and new carols is the perfect antidote to holiday consumer chaos. And the choir’s truly stirring version of “Ave Maria” will keep you in a spiritually rejuvenated mood right through to the 25th.
Holiday vibe: All is calm, all is bright.

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio

(December 21 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts)
Cue the trumpets and timpani: Early Music Vancouver brings to life the fabulously festive cantatas 1, 3, and 6 that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for church performances during the feast days of Christmas in 1734 and 1735. Lending their talents to the glistening concert are music director Stephen Stubbs, soprano Teresa Wakim, mezzo Krisztina Szabó, tenor Zachary Finkelstein, and baritone Sumner Thompson, backed up by a Baroque orchestra and the Early Music Vancouver Vocal Ensemble.
Holiday vibe: Deck the Baroque halls.

THEATRE

TheatreSports’ The Christmas Queen: Improv Comedy Fairytale

(Until December 21 at the Improv Centre)
The Grinchlike titular monarch receives rowdy hisses and boos throughout this hilarious seasonal show as she tries to ruin the holidays for the townsfolk. The audience takes part by offering suggestions as she tries to trample the holiday spirit.
Holiday vibe: Laughs as big as Santa’s belly after an all-night cookie binge.

Cinderella: An East Van Panto

(December 3 to 28 at the York Theatre)
Head over to the Drive for this whacked-out, family-friendly, hiply contemporary ode to to the old-fashioned pantomimes of yore. The able hands at Theatre Replacement (including shining lights like Amiel Gladstone, Veda Hille, and Charles Demers) return to the York after last year’s Jack and the Beanstalk with a Cinderella that is definitely not Disneyfied. Expect a raucous, noisy upending of the fairy tale, complete with some side-splitting local potshots, by some of the city’s top performers.
Holiday vibe: Nutty Noel, East Van–style.

A Twisted Christmas Carol

(December 3 to 27 at the Arts Club Revue Stage)
They bill this show the “holiday anti-classic”, and we highly recommend it to those who feel overfull of Christmas sugarplums. A crack team of improv comedians (including Diana Frances, Jeff Gladstone, and Gary Jones) bring Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, and the Ghost of Christmas Past back with a vengeance, helped along by warped audience suggestions. And be warned: even poor little Tiny Tim is not immune from the good-humoured skewering.
Holiday vibe: Joyful and irreverent.

It's A Wonderful Life Radio Show

(December 5 to 30 at Pacific Theatre)
Peter Church’s brilliantly intimate combination of the classic 1940s story of a distraught Everyman on Christmas Eve with a radio broadcast from the same era creates its own kind of magic. George Bailey and his angel-in-waiting will be there, but so will some of the tropes of old radio and its jingles.
Holiday vibe: Nuanced nostalgia.

Dylan Thomas: Return Journey

(December 9 to 21 at the Cultch)
Don’t miss Bob Kingdom’s arresting performance as the famous Welsh poet in Anthony Hopkins’s much-praised directorial debut. It’s the farewell tour of the lyrical hit, which more than 80,000 around the globe have enjoyed. Kingdom has been lauded for bringing to life a man who wrestled with personal demons. Think poetry, stories, and a deep one-man performance.
Holiday vibe: Do not go gentle…

Bah Humbug!

(December 11, 13, and 16 to 20 at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts)
Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol gets recast to the Downtown Eastside for the fifth year in a row, with Jim Byrnes starring as the iPhone-toting, sushi-loving Scrooge, as well as iconic actor Margo Kane as the narrator and singer-actor Tom Pickett as Bob Cratchit. Each year, the production gets rejigged, and what makes this one so special is that Strathcona artist and muralist Richard Tetrault is making large-scale projections of East Van back alleys, crows, and houses for the project. And then there’s the music: pop songs, folk, blues, gospel, industrial rock, and traditional seasonal favourites, backed by the Downtown Eastside’s Saint James Music Academy Youth Choir.
Holiday vibe: Relevance and timeliness instead of treacle.

Befana’s Star: A Traditional Italian Christmas Story

(December 13 and 14 at 4 and 7 p.m. at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts)
BellaLuna Productions presents a new family play about an eccentric old Italian woman who decides to follow the famed star that led the Three Magi to Bethlehem, carrying cakes for the child king. In Italian tradition, the old Befana still flies through the skies on the eve of the Epiphany, delivering gifts to little ones.
Holiday vibe: Sugar and spice and everything nice.

DANCE

Royal Winnipeg Ballet Nutcracker

(December 12 to 14 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre)
Ballet B.C. presents the RWB’s sparkling, clearly Canadian rendition of the classic, complete with Mounties, pond hockey, and even, for the first time, polar bears. Lush costumes and sets match polished en-pointe dance.
Holiday vibe: Tutu-riffic Sugar Plum perfection.

Goh Ballet Nutcracker

(December 18 to 22 at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts)
American Ballet Theatre star Paloma Herrera steps into the Sugar Plum Fairy’s pink pointe shoes for this family-friendly version of the ballet classic. Expect more than 200 young dancers to twirl across the stage, to the sounds of the virtuoso Vancouver Opera Orchestra playing Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece live.
Holiday vibe: Music, movement, and magic.

Too much tinsel on the calendar for you? Don’t worry: you won’t look like a Grinch for heading to the less holiday-themed but equally festive shows taking place this season. Consider hitting the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s glimmering performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on December 19 and 20 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Not your style? Opt for Joy for Jazz’s Heart and Soul on Thursday (November 27) at St. James Hall, with Vancouver duo Jillian Lebeck and Adam Thomas joining vocalist Karin Plato on a double bill.

Head out to Richmond’s Gateway Theatre for Crazy for You, from December 4 to 31: we can’t think of a more uplifting way to spend a cold night than escaping into the tap-dancing high jinks, silly love story, and hummable George Gershwin songs of this musical classic. The whole family can head down to Mary Poppins at the Arts Club’s Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage for a truly top-notch, extravagantly staged musical hit that does justice to the beloved movie, from December 10 to January 4, 2015. Or escape into Carousel Theatre for Young People’s fantasy world of James and the Giant Peach, a musical rendition of Roald Dahl’s tale, December 6 to January 4, 2015, at the Waterfront Theatre.

Top it all off with the Strauss Symphony of Canada’s Salute to Vienna on January 1 at the Orpheum, and you will waltz into the New Year feeling artistically fulfilled.