Culture: Scalawags, Holly Cole & the Nutcracker

Music Christmas with Holly Cole: When Holly Cole – best known for her chewy phrasing, especially on the 1993 remake of “I Can See Clearly Now” – takes the stage for her Victoria yuletide show, the results will be as refreshingly strange as a Bond villainess in a feel-good Christmas film. Cole, whose biography lauds the sexy, provocative and dangerous character of her voice, sings a raft of old-time seasonal classics under the watchful eye of conductor Giuseppe Pietraroia. December 20. Victoria Symphony, victoriasymphony​.ca/concerts

Books Scalawags: Rogues, Roustabouts, Wags & Scamps – Ne’er-Do-Wells Through the Ages: If nothing else, Jim Christy’s survey of rapscallions through the ages introduces you to the richest seam of synonyms in all of English. With tales of rodomontades and ragamuffins, miscreants and mountebanks, the book forgoes the “great man” theory of history in its search for the rascals with the most outrageous escapades. Christy’s goal is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and he clearly plays favourites. Search for the headwaters of the Nile, he says, and you’re merely an adventurer. But convince the jungle dwellers of Sumatra to worship you as an albino king – that makes you a scalawag. November 2008. $20 from Anvil Press, anvilpress.net

Dance The Nutcracker: The stars by which humans navigate are disturbingly in motion, and so it’s easy to be grateful for fixtures like Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker – danced here by the Moscow Classical Ballet. The group was founded in 1966 as a Russian touring company and is one of only three state-supported Russian ballet troupes, the others being the Bolshoi and the Kirov. Fresh from New York, this production, directed by Natalia Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilyov, promises “grace, harmony and effervescence.” December 28 to 31. Queen Elizabeth Theatre, balletbc.com