Watching the holiday shoppers jostle past each another on the sidewalks, it’s easy to imagine their theatergoing alter-egos. That tourist with the American Girl bag, muscling her way through the Rockefeller Center throng, is on her way to the Rockettes. The lady in the shearling coat and her beribboned daughter are heading to City Ballet’s “Nutcracker” with their twin Big Brown Bags. The skinny downtown dude in the wool cap is lugging his American Apparel purchases to Joe’s Pub to catch David Parker and the Bang Group’s “Nut/Cracked.”

Whatever your bag is, the city’s holiday line-up offers something for every New Yorker. The venerable “Nutcracker” alone appears in a half-dozen incarnations. At its 1892 premiere in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky’s new ballet was a flop; he’d be astonished to see it running for five solid weeks at New York City Ballet, the once and still spiritual home of George Balanchine. The reliable City Ballet version has all the fairy dust a heart could want, and the rotating cast of Sugar Plum fairies includes two of the most exquisite ballerinas in town: Sofiane Sylve and Wendy Whelan (November 25-December 30, 212-870-5570).

For a briefer (and cheaper) “Nutcracker,” try the Joffrey Ballet School’s abbreviated version (with choreography by school artistic director John Magnus), which fits all the key divertissements into two hours (December 17, 212-992-8484). New York Theatre Ballet’s one-hour version, choreographed by Keith Michael, borrows its elaborate stage and costume design from 19th-century lithographs of the English Toy Theatre (December 3-18, 212-679-0401). “The Yorkville Nutcracker,” the Francis Patrelle ballet now in its 10th season, transposes the plot to 1895 New York. City Ballet’s Jenifer Ringer and Jared Angle star (December 9-11, 212-772-4448). From the Upper East Side to Loisaida: the Clara of Daniel Catanach’s “Nutcracker in the Lower” hails from the projects; her land of sweets has Flamenco castanets. (November 26-December 3, 212-352-3101).

“Nut/Cracked” is the brainchild of downtown dance’s zany David Parker and the Bang Group. (“Finally,” they promise, “a nutcracker with nuts!”) Last year’s Dance Theater Workshop version, performed to scratchy old vinyl recordings mixed with Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller riffs on the tunes, featured the large Mr. Parker in toe shoes, slurping lo mein noodles out of a takeout box. This version, adapted for the 18-foot stage at Joe’s Pub, promises all the post-modern vaudeville and four times the intimacy, which could get uncomfortable during the mutual thumbsucking dance (December 15-18, 212-539-8778).

All in all, Joe’s Pub has more kitschy holiday specials than Ricky’s. Obie-winner and Joe’s Pub regular Jackie Hoffman (“Hairspray,” “Kissing Jessica Stein”) has a Monday night Chanukah themed stand-up show (December 5, 12, 19, 26), while the Irish band Teada reenacts the ancient Wren Boys caroling tradition while playing the uilleann pipes in their “Very Irish Christmas Show,” featuring local Irish step dancers (December 11, 212-539-8500).

A few blocks away at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, “Balletto Stiletto” is what director Mary Fulham calls “a downtown family show.” The kinetic, punchy Heidi Latsky choreographs a disco parable based on the Brothers Grimm’s “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and features a gaggle of hung-over party girls and martial arts sequences starring (seriously) Eugene the Poojean (December 2-18, 212-475-7710).

Definitely not for the kids, the Red Room’s edgy “The 8: Reindeer Monologues” has Mrs. Claus hitting the sauce and some seriously naughty reindeer games (November 18-December 17, 212-868-4444). At Chelsea’s Gotham Comedy Club, “A Very Jewish Christmas” passes the time on December 24 (212-367-9000). Manhattan Theatre Source offers a pair of holiday solo shows: Greg Bodine performs “A Christmas Carol” as Dickens probably read it on his 1867 tour, while Jason Grossman plays all 33 roles in his affectionate “It’s a Wonderful (One Man Show) Life” (December 4-30, 212-501-4751).

Up at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park, you can glimpse the big top of the Big Apple Circus, featuring international masters of horseback riding, aerial tricks, juggling, and the flying trapeze (until January 8, 212-721-6500). In the heart of Times Square, at the New Victory Theatre, the visiting Golden Dragon Acrobats from Henan, China produce an eye-popping chain of acts that range from the mystifying (woman shooting baskets with her feet) to the seriously alarming (man balancing atop a 30-foot pyramid of chairs). (Until January 1, 646-223-3020.)

This year, the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular” boasts a new opening number, good news for those who have sat through their share of living nativities and wooden soldier parades (until January 2, 212-247-4777). Another entry in the high-production-value sweep stakes, the Beacon Theater’s “Disney Live! Winnie the Pooh” aims to keep kids on the edge of their seats by leading them in recreations of Tigger’s bounce and Pooh’s calisthenics (December 7-28, 212-307-7171).

Over at Madison Square Garden’s “Peter Pan,” the departing Cathy Rigby takes flight for the last time before finally turning her back on the production’s sumptuous Neverland (November 30-December 30). And for one night, Andrea Bocelli lends his beloved voice to “A Royal Christmas,” featuring the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, the Westminster Choir, and scenes from “The Nutcracker” performed by stars from five ballet companies. (December 2, 212-307-7171).

In the smaller, more artsy category, Symphony Space offers both “The Christmas Revels,” an Elizabethan extravaganza for a cast of 80 crafted around the story of the Shakespearean clown Will Kent (December 9-11), and “New Voices: Holiday Sampler,” which proposes to visit the holiday standards of future years with Broadway composers and singers (December 5, 212- 864-5400).

In the midst of all the blockbusters, don’t overlook your last chance to see some acclaimed theater. “A Naked Girl on the Appian Way” closes December 4; “Thom Pain (Based on Nothing)” on December 24, and Broadway’s lavish “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” will breathe its last on December 31st.

Take the out-of-town relatives to the new “Jersey Boys,” a surprisingly satisfying jukebox musical, or “Movin’ Out,” Twyla Tharp’s kinetic dance set to Billy Joel, which closes on December 11. If they must, let them see Harvey Fierstein and Rosie O’Donnell in “Fiddler on the Roof” before it closes on January 8. For hearty good cheer on a winter’s night, there’s the Pearl Theater Company’s hilarious Restoration comedy, “The Gentleman Dancing-Master,” or the limited engagement of “Measure for Measure” from the authentic, all male cast from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre of London, starring Mark Rylance. And for a truly novel cult comic/cabaret experience, complete with live jazz, check out the British import, “His Royal Hipness Lord Buckley in the Zam Zam Room” at 59E59, which features a be-bop Scrooge story and a jive-talking Jesus.

Three virtuoso modern dance events light up the stage this holiday season, each charged with an often joyous undercurrent: Alvin Ailey’s five-week season at City Center (212-541-7979), Ballet Hispanico’s two-week run at the Joyce (212-242-0800), and Savion Glover’s three-week Joyce engagement. The raw emotion, terrific energy, and consummate skill of these three makes it not only worthwhile but important to find an evening to see them. Their performances effortlessly produce wonder, an emotion too many other holiday shows try to manipulate out of crowds.

And then we come to the World Music Institute’s “Song of the Spirit,” in which the plenty of New York is gathered in one very beautiful place for a unique evening. There’s an old-style trombone shout band, a gospel-klezmer fusion band, a rock jazz-hip-hop singer, a folk singer, Tibetan monks, a Harlem poet, a conceptual artist – all in the inspiring architecture of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine (December 6, 212-545-7536). Just thinking of it in the snow can give you shivers – all those New Yorkers, rubbing shoulders. This time of year, it’s truly a wonderful town.