The best Christmas shows in NYC in 2025

You’ll get a kick out of this holiday stalwart, which still features Santa, wooden soldiers and the dazzling Rockettes. In recent years, new music, more eye-catching costumes and advanced technology have been introduced to bring audience members closer to the performance. In the signature kick line that finds its way into most of the big dance numbers, the Rockettes’ 36 pairs of legs rise and fall like the batting of an eyelash, their perfect unison a testament to the disciplined human form. This is precision dancing on a massive scale—a Busby Berkeley number come to glorious life—and it takes your breath away.

George Balanchine's magical 1954 production, set to Tchaikovsky's timeless score, includes the full New York City Ballet company, two casts of School of American Ballet students, scenery by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, costumes by Karinska and lighting by Mark Stanley, after Ronald Bates's original concept. The show is a magical occasion: Along with a one-ton Christmas tree that grows from 12 to 40 feet, there's a snowstorm of blizzard proportions and a Mother Ginger with a nine-foot-wide skirt. In the end, however, Balanchine's choreography is what holds it all together. It's enchanting, and it never grows old.

Austin McCormick and his risqué neo-Baroque dance-theater group Company XIV present a lavish erotic reimagining of the classic holiday tale, complete with circus performers, operatic singers and partial nudity. The word nutcracker has customarily conjured innocent wonder; now be ready to add glitter pasties, stripper poles and comically large stuffed penises to the toys in wonderland. Definitely leave the kids at home. 

Michael Cerveris, an expert at 19th-century glowering, stars as the miserly and humbug-bashing Ebenezer Scrooge in the returns of Jack Thorne's popular 2017 stage version of Charles Dickens's classic yuletide story. Director Matthew Warchus's 2019 Broadway production swept all four design categories (plus one for Best Score!) at that foreshortened season's Tony Awards; Thomas Caruso shares directing duties for its return engagement at the PAC. Nancy Opel and Crystal Lucas-Perry play two of Scrooge's ghostly guests; other notables in the cast include George Abud, Chris Hoch, Rashidra Scott and Dead Outlaw's Julia Knitel and Dashiell Eaves.

John Kevin Jones goes to the Dickens in this one-hour account of the novelist's classic holiday ghost story, adapted with director Rhonda Dodd. The Merchant's House Museum, formerly the home of a wealthy 19th-century family, provides an atmospheric candlelit setting for Jones's 13th annual engagement. This year, Jones alternates performances with Vince Gatton. Select performances include an optional reception at which the audience sips mulled wine and Jones recites Clement Moore's “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

You might mistake her for a rodeo clown, but superstar drag artist Dina Martina is a unique and hilarious genius. She blends the traditional elements of a drag show—singing (sort of), dancing (in a way), jokes and stories (stream of consciousness)—into an intoxicating cocktail of demented glee. Her annual Christmas show features "overburdened costumes" and accompanist Chris Jeffries. The Dina experience is hard to describe and even harder to forget. Don't miss out.

This hour-long original musical adaptation of Dickens's yuletide fable, created by composer Michael Sgouros and librettist-director Brenda Bell, returns for its 17th year at the West Village's Players Theatre. The updated set is inspired by traditional British panto.

Mrs. Claus, Vixen and some elves search set out on a quest to find Christmas spirit in New York City in a raunchy holiday show—with drag queens, puppets, dirty jokes and dirty dancing—directed and choreographed by burlesque artist Sassie LeFay and music directed by Stephen Murphy. Expect more naughtiness than niceness; something tells us there will be a lot of unwrapping involved. 

An angel helps a suicidal man see how important he is to the world in Anthony E. Palermo's radio-play–style adaptation of Frank Capra's cherished holiday movie, which includes period music, ads and sound effects. Charlotte Moore directs the production, which the Irish Rep has previously mounted in 2013 and 2017; the cast this time comprises Rufus Collins, Ali Ewoldt, Reed Lancaster, Leenya Rideout and Ashley Robinson. 

Two of RuPaul's Drag Race's grandest dames, Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme, deck Town Hall in boughs of holly, serving nog till you gag in this now-annual holiday camp fest. These are no Instagram queens, but bona fide stage pros of the old school. Expect plenty of musical comedy and spiked punchlines. 

Julia Mattison and Joel Waggoner's holiday show began as an online lark: they challeneged themselves to write a new song for each December day before Christmas. But it has since grown into a yearly live tradition, most recently at Joe's Pub. This year, popular demand has propelled the show into a longer run (eight shows) in a larger space at the Public (the Shiva Theater). Mattison and Waggoner are very gifted performers and musical comedians—she earned a Tony nomination earlier this year for co-writing the score to Death Becomes Her—so their yuletide originals and improvised carols have the potential to knock your stockings off. 

Brooklyn Ballet's take on The Nutcracker, choreographed by artistic director Lynn Parkerson, emphasizes cultural and artistic diversity. Alongside sequences that hew to the classic 19th-century tradition are interludes featuring street dance, flamenco, belly dancing, Chinese dance, hoop dance, hip-hop and the Hopak, a traditional Ukrainian dance. The 2025 edition features Michael “Big Mike” Fields as a pop-and-lock Drosselmeyer amd Brian "HallowDreamz" Henry as a krumping Rat King, along with Aliesha Bryan, the Eva Dance Studio, Sira Melikian, ShanDien LaRance, George Sanders and Dance Theatre of Harlem alums Kamala Saara, Derek Brockington, Kouadio Davis and Crystal Serrano. Live music is proviced by beatboxer Baba Israel, violinist Zafir Tawil, accordionist Mikhail Smirnoff, drummer Paula Green and dizi floutist Yimin Miao.

Now in its 22th iteration, Charles Rice-González's holiday play, which subverts both The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol, imagines a queer Latino couple caught in a journey through time one trippy Christmas eve. Witness ’80s flashbacks, Martha Stewart dinner parties and plenty of angelic divas to light the way. Gama Valle directs this year's edition, which features Joyah Dominique, Vasilios León, Juan Cálix, SkittLeZ Ortiz and Jesse Vega.

Caleb Teicher swings back to the Joyce with a holiday edition of their exuberant 2021 show, a partly improvisational celebration of the Lindy Hop as re-imagined by Teicher and collaborators Evita Arce, LaTasha Barnes, Nathan Bugh and big-band leader Eyal Vilner. Audience members can join the fun onstage in the finale.

The Secret Theatre, which had a near-death experience during the pandemic, decks the halls of its new Woodside venue with its version of Charles Dickens's haunted tale of a pinchpenny's redemption. Company founder Richard Mazda, who wrote the adaptation, also directs the show and leads the cast as Scrooge. 

Dances Patrelle offers its 29th annual performance of Francis Patrelle's The Yorkville Nutcracker, set in 1895 New York and featuring adorable child dancers alongside the professionals. This year's edition once again stars Miriam Miller as the Sugar Plum Fairy, joined by her fellow New York City Ballet principal Tyler Angle as the Cavalier.

Caustic wit, witchy charisma and fearless queer wisdom have made Justin Vivian Bond one of New York’s essential performers. Now the alt-cabaret star, trans icon and McArthur "Genius" Grantee returns to her frequent roost at Joe’s Pub for a two-week engagement with a solstice show to melt the hearts of snowflakes everywhere, joined by a five-piece band led by musical director David Sytkowski.

Random Access Theatre’s boozy-geeky Drunk Texts series muddles classical texts—or modern ones reimagined as classical—into a cocktail of drinking games, improv and audience interaction, in which the audiences chooses which thespians take shots. Now the gang toasts the holiday season with its highly spirited annual version of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. 

Nimbus Dance’s annual twist on The Nutcracker guides audiences through the streets, parks and sewers of Jersey City in a production that pairs 15 professional dancers with more than 80 young perfomers. Nimbus leader Samuel Pott directs and choreographs the show, which is set to a jazzy variation on Tchaikovsky's score and includes animated projections by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger. The 2025 production spends a weekend at Newark's NJPAC before returning to the company's home base in Jersey City. 

Joe Iconis is a mainstay of local musical-theater songwriting, and he parties as well as he composes: His shows, stuffed with longtime friends and collaborators, have an exuberant sense of community. Now he returns to 54 Below with the 15th annual edition of his rollicking holiday show. In addition to the usual gang—which has swelled to almost 50 performers—he is joined here by Broadway treasure Annie Golden.

Jackie Beat has been doing Christmas shows for more than two decades: You can’t stop the Beat. Her classic carol parodies—such as "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Syphilis" and "Santa's Baby"—are hilarious, and her powerhouse vocals are impressive. But it's her improvisations and crowd work that demonstrate what a natural-born entertainer looks like in the spotlight.

Choreographer David Parker and his Bang Group reprise their neovaudevillian version of The Nutcracker, a comedic deconstruction of the holiday classic that mixes tap, ballet, contemporary dance, disco and bubble-wrap stomping. Each performance is followed by a Winter Wonderland Afterparty that includes hot chocolate, sweets, photo ops and a tap-dancing station.

As part of its Once Upon a Ballet series, which is aimed at young children, NYTB presents its annual hour-long Art Nouveau version of the holiday ballet, complete with clockwork elves and an owl that flies over the audience. The set design is by Gillian Bradshaw-Smith and the costumes by Sylvia Taalsohn Nolan. (In addition to its annual run at the Florence Gould Theater, the company is also performing a 3pm matinee on December 13 at Queens College's Kupferberg Center.)

The comedic chanteuse Catherine Cohen has delighted NYC audiences for years, whether in her weekly Cabernet Cabaret show at Club Cumming or cohosting the hilarious weekly hang podcast, Seek Treatment, with Pat Regan. Now she returns to Joe's Pub—where she filmed her 2022 Netflix special, The Twist...? She's Gorgeous—with a new night of subversive songs, fabulous looks and self-directed diva worship. Expect a few numbers from her 2024 album, Overdressed.

Three Birdland mainstays—the clarion-voiced Klea Blackhurst, the waggish host Jim Caruso and the velvety pianist-crooner Billy Stritch—get into the swing of the holiday season with their 16th annual set of set of jazzy Christmas classics.