Jingle-Jangle Season

There are 8 million stories in the naked holidays . . . and “Naked Holidays,” at Sacred Fools Theatre, tells seven of them.

It’s naked in the sense of exposing all sorts of holiday-related emotions--the jangled as well as the jingled--as well as in a more literal way. Although there’s no full frontal nudity, a few moments come close (with both genders). There are scenes of sex and violence. This is not a show for kids.

Most of the clothes come off near the end of George Larkin’s frisky musical introduction, which also establishes that the holidays in question include Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and solstice celebrations, as well as Christmas. The show pokes fun at its own ethnic nondiversity by enlisting an unwilling white guy (Jeff Benninghofen) to explain Kwanzaa.

Not all of the seven vignettes that follow are especially raw. Even John Sylvain’s “Nude Nude Nude,” which is set backstage at a strip club, is sentimental in the time-honored Christmas tradition.

In Joshua Rebell’s “Blue X-mas,” “blue” refers to melancholic, not to risque. Rebell tells a shaggy-dog story about an upscale New Yorker (Benninghofen), bored by the holidays, who’s asked to deliver a present by his wife and becomes involved in a trail of unsettling intrigue. Loose ends dangle, but the protagonist ends up excited anew by life and by his wife. As directed by David P. Moore, it’s a strange but satisfying pick-me-up.

Nothing else is as good. The first sketch is the most ambitious--combining puppetry, rhymed couplets, a mythological being and dark generational satire--but it misfires in a big way. Many of the other pieces, more modest in ambition, succeed modestly.

Donna Tina Charles’ “Holiday Burn” pokes fun at Middle American culinary standards and control freaks. Rik Keller’s “Credit Where Credit Is Due” is a tongue-in-cheek account of a tardy Santa’s transformation of a salacious Hollywood mogul. David Rodwin’s “Holiday Resort” offers a bit of local California color before it slips into heavy-handed domestic lampoonery. Paul Plunkett’s “The Christmas Fix,” based on William S. Burroughs’ “A Junky’s Christmas,” nimbly displays the holiday spirit at work in the lower depths.

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* “Naked Holidays,” Sacred Fools Theatre, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 18. $10. (310) 281-8337. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.