It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas : Stage: The explosion of seasonal shows stems not only from the magic they work at the box office, but from motivations of the heart as well.

In these recession-wracked days, theaters throughout the county are hurting. And, although they may cut back in every way possible just to survive, somehow more theaters than ever are finding it in their hearts and wallets to put on the ultimate holiday show.

Part of the reason for the explosion is that Christmas is when people are looking for places to celebrate the holiday, for opportunities to celebrate with other people, for art that refreshes, challenges, nourishes or just soothes the troubled spirit.

Looked at from the bottom line, successful Christmas shows can bail theaters out of trouble, magically turning red ink into black. But the drive to produce a quality Christmas show also comes from the heart.

Just as the Christmas season can make audiences exceptionally receptive, it also inspires artists more than at almost any other time.

For many San Diego writers and directors, Christmas shows are deeply personal. And the results of their efforts are as culturally diverse as the county itself. Here is a modest sampler of what theater-goers can expect at San Diego’s leading theaters this season. (A more comprehensive listing appears on F14.)

For the last 14 years, Kerry Cederberg Meads has drawn from memories of her girlhood Christmases in Minnesota to pen eight new scripts for Lamb’s Players Theatre’s “A Festival of Christmas”--five of which were repeated.

Ths year she has written her ninth script and also revised Lamb’s second annual “Dickens, Dining & Song.”

Only one of the “Festivals” was based on her recollections of her own hometown, which she researched by interviewing family members. This year, a “A Festival of Christmas” is set in a magical far-off kingdom. And “Dickens, Dining & Song,” in which an actor plays Charles Dickens playing Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” is in a 19th-Century English setting.

But feelings from her childhood have wound their way into the scripts from the very first show, which was ostensibly about a Renaissance family in which the mother had died, leaving the family at a loss on how to re-create the frivolity of the holiday.

“The very first ‘Festival of Christmas’ I did was a memory of an incident in my own family,” Meads recalled. “My family gathered at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s on Christmas Eve. My grandma was the spiritual leader, and she would play piano and sing carols and would light a candle and read a Christmas story, and then it would be a madhouse in which we would open presents.”

But those Christmases, which Meads still speaks of with reverence and joy, ended suddenly when she was just a teen-ager.

“When I was 17, both my grandparents were killed in a car crash. It was Thanksgiving, and in the next Christmas that followed, no one knew what to do. We all got together because that was the plan. We didn’t sing Christmas carols, we didn’t read the story, we had a dinner, but it wasn’t the same, and we opened the presents. There was a real loss of spirit.”

It is no coincidence that every “Festival of Christmas”--including this one, which opens Dec. 6--someone tells stories, someone lights candles, the company sings Christmas carols and presents are opened.

In this particular “Festival,” which plays at Lamb’s resident stage in National City, people have forgotten how to celebrate Christmas and have to relearn it.

And in “Dickens, Dining & Song,” which opens Dec. 10 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, there is also a lavish multi-course meal, served family-style with all the trimmings by the actors, one of whom will be Meads herself, playing Mrs. Dickens and her husband, Rick Meads, playing a part in the ensemble.

Ironically, her efforts haven’t succeeded in re-creating the feeling for Meads herself, who worries that her hard work during the Christmas season shortchanges her own family’s celebration.

“In a lot of ways, there’s a personal longing in me that I haven’t been able to create for myself or my family. But I want audiences to walk out feeling cared about. I know that sounds odd, but when I looked for people for ‘Dickens,’ I didn’t want an actor who could sing and who had waited on tables before, I needed people who could care and who would enjoy serving and giving someone a perfect Christmas.”

The oldest tradition in town is the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s resolutely nontraditional “A Christmas Carol,” adapted by artistic director Douglas Jacobs.

The Rep prides itself on keeping its 16-year-old “A Christmas Carol” fresh each year, employing different directors to infuse the piece with new spirit, casting multi-culturally and finding a connection between Dickens’ message about the poor of his time and the poor of our own.

For the third year in a row, the Rep will host a Magic Christmas in which homeless children and their families see the show free Dec. 18. Patrons are encouraged to bring unwrapped toys and after the Magic Christmas performance, the actor playing Scrooge distributes the presents to the children.

Only last year, the Rep staged a contemporary version of “A Christmas Carol,” in which actors, dressed as San Diego’s own homeless, discover a copy of the Dickens’ classic and act it out with props inspired by the junkyards of the city. As far back as 1977, in the company’s second production of the show, a struggling local actress who was later to rename herself Whoopi Goldberg, was cast across the color line as Mrs. Fezziwig.

This year, Scott Feldsher, artistic director of Sledgehammer Theatre, will direct. The show opens Dec. 5 on the Lyceum Stage.

Feldsher, 27, who is the same age Jacobs was when he first adapted the piece, will direct--a coincidence that Jacobs likes. Jonathan McMurtry, well known for his frequent performances at the Old Globe Theatre, will star, and a children’s chorus will be featured.

Jacobs likens the Rep production to a Christmas tree which may look different each year under the hands of different directors but remains, in essence, the same.

“It may have different decorations each year. Some only use the red and yellow balls, while others want to throw everything on it. But the story of ‘Christmas Carol’ still stands there like a tree at the heart of it,” Jacobs said.

“Just as the tree is a bridge between earth and sky, upper and lower, ‘Christmas Carol’ seems to be a story that is a bridge between the inside and the outside, what goes on in the life inside us and the life around us.”

That, he said, is what keeps the piece fresh and exciting for him.

“Every year, there’s a point at which the story begins to affect me. When I’m heavily involved in ‘A Christmas Carol’ it’s almost like I’m catching something from Dickens. Sometimes the ghost of past productions haunt you so much it’s hard to see things that might happen. Sometimes it gives you a springboard for leaping off. I have very vivid dreams about it that I associate partly with this time of year when people are coming out of the summer doldrums. There’s a little more of an edge and they seem awake.”

The Old Globe Theatre, in association with Teatro Mascara Magica is entering the holiday show sweepstakes with a project very close to writer Raul Moncada’s heart.

“Pastorela ‘91: A Shepherd’s Play” is Moncada’s version of the pastorela story, a centuries-old tradition in Mexico, in which the story of the Nativity is told from the perspective of the shepherds, battling their way through the devil’s tricks, to make their way to the manger.

Moncada, a Cuban-born actor-director-translator, once tried to blend into mainstream culture, Americanizing himself at one point with the name Jeffrey Grimes.

For the past five years, Moncada, who now works in the new position of multicultural associate at the Old Globe, has dug deep into his Latin heritage, throwing himself into the mission of getting plays by Latino writers on the main stage of the venerable Old Globe. His success rate is high. He has found “The Boiler Room,” “Blood Wedding,” “The Granny,” “La Fiaca” and now, “Pastorela ‘91,” which opens Dec. 12 in the chapel on the grounds of the former Naval Hospital in Balboa Park.

It took “a little nudging and pushing” to get “Pastorela” on the boards--”but always with the full support of the administration here,” he said.

Moncada sold the idea to the Globe administration by offering to stage a pastorela for the company’s Christmas party a few years ago.

“I translated it and got actors who were all local, not professional. Everyone was really charmed by it and that may have planted some seed as to what a beautiful tradition it is.”

For Moncada, bringing the Latin tradition to Old Globe audiences has been a mission that has nourished his soul.

“I feel like a fuller person. The letters and comments we get on the plays we do are so encouraging that it gives you fuel to go forward. You know you are bringing a new experience to people who had never considered these cultures to be different from stereotypes and anytime you’ve achieved a little breaking down of a stereotype you’ve achieved a little bit of a miracle. And Christmas season is a good time for miracles. Let’s hope for a few more.”

While the pastorela focuses on the subplot of the shepherds on the way to the manger, Langston Hughes’ “Black Nativity” tells the main story of what was going on in the manger itself.

And it tells it through African American gospel and spiritual music--giving African American audiences and performers a chance to personalize the story through their own eyes.

What first attracted Floyd Gaffney to “Black Nativity,” which he is now directing for the fourth consecutive year, was the need for a holiday show that tells the story through African American eyes.

The show, a Southeast Community Theatre production which opens Dec. 6 at the Educational Cultural Complex, may have been inspired by nativity plays done in black churches, Gaffney said.

The show “gives us a chance to use the talent of people who aren’t theater-trained but have beautiful voices. It gives them a chance to do a community piece.”

For years, Gaffney has been the main local African American director in town responsible for bringing the work of African American playwrights and performers center stage.

For him, it is important that “Black Nativity” not forget its religious roots. And it is important that it remain deeply based in the church community from which he gets his singers.

“It’s important to do this show because it brings the community together. It celebrates the holiday in terms of how blacks express their feelings toward it and it gives people a chance who wouldn’t even be considered for another show to showcase what they can do. I don’t feel I’m a missionary, but i feel this is something people look forward to once a year.”