Already there's discontent on the festive front. It's not enough to just be jovial and jolly anymore. Heavens, no. Now you need to be witty and alternative: A latex Christmas, a Dickensian, miserable, Scandinavian, ridiculous Christmas. You name it, and it's poking fun at Santa and his fluffy rimmed hat. Thankfully, as fans of everything fun and alternative, we're embracing it all. La Noël est mort! Vive la Noël!

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Brassic in Brixton
Brixton goes all communal tonight, as the Sarf's various establishments pool their resources for the greater good. Seven venues - Plan B, Dex, The Dogstar, Brixton Bar & Grill, The Prince, The Satay Bar & The Fridge Bar - are throwing open their doors to the Brixton massif. All you need to get in and sample their delights is a drinks receipt from one of the other venues. Sort of like a legitimizes bar crawl, but covering everything from members' bars to drinking holes and hotels.

A Dickens of a Christmas
Forking out almost a ton to have dinner on a wonky wooden bench might seem a touch excessive. But when it's a wonky bench on a Victorian London set, in newly refurbished subterranean vaults, complete with a full cast of wandering Dickensian characters, a lavish four-course meal, an Oriental gentleman's bar, and a Victorian ice-rink for a dance-floor, you'd have to be Scrooge himself to not be wooed.

Norwegian Christmas Concert
Popping out to the Royal Norwegian Embassy's Christmas shindig might sound a touch obscure. But with Norwegian avant-garde trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær's legendary atmospheric-jazz-breakbeat soundscapes plus the memorably monikered, ethereally vocalled Solveig Slettahjel and her Slow Motion Quintet, this celebration of Norwegian genre-melting jazz is almost enough to make us consider Skandification. And yes, that's a technical term.

Loss Christmas Special
Whilst most of us will try to repress the impending misery of the festive period, smothering our relentless familial and consumerist obligations in alcoholism and gluttony, Viktor Wynd and Suzette Field of The Last Tuesday Society are openly revelling in it. Join them in preparing for the imminent Christmas gloom with a dose of bourbon-soaked blues, whiney orphans, withering jazz, cryeoke, and, of course, Loss's infamous teary midnight onion-chopping.

Nonsense Nativity
"Deck the halls with bells and ridicule," as Dr Dimaglio and his band of trusty Secrets unleash their brand of enjoyable idiocy on the festive period. If you fancy taking a bash at the traditional aspects of the season, then don you wackiest Christmas finery for an evening of surreal comedy, twisted magic, music, drinks, and an array of pointless entertainment at the hands of host, Toby Caldwell.

1-2-3-4 Winter Offensive
Love or loathe him, when Sean McClusky throws an event, few can rival the kind of line-ups that he musters. NYC collective ARE Weapons, UJ-favourite Whitey, electropop purveyors Bolt Action Five, Bono Must Die and Bombay Bicycle Club (apparently not the Indian restaurant in Clapham) are just some of the main troublemakers. And with acoustic sets from Doolittle and their ilk, it's all far less offensive than its name might suggest.

Torture Garden Winter Wonderland Xmas Ball
What do you picture when you think of Christmas? It's likely to be either images of enraged familial disharmony and the last minute crush on Oxford Street, or else traditional scenes of fluffy snow, a jolly Santa, mince pies and fir trees shimmering in the corner. It is less likely that you will picture a festive spectacle of latex, dungeons and drag-queens. But then who are we to judge?

Billy Bragg In Conversation
From East End singalongs to local punk band, the Riff Raff, from political activist to English folk-rocker, Billy Bragg has been around the proverbial block of the music scene just a few times. Armed with his guitar and a record player, he is here in conversation with the Southbank's Artistic Director, Jude Kelly, no doubt with a few tunes to ease the way.

Cinderella
Panto. On the one hand, we love the idea, what with all that hammy cross-dressing hilarity. But two hours in a room full of screaming children can bring out such "bahumbug!" in us that it's generally best to steer clear. Until the Rt. Hon. Stephen Fry took on Cinderella, that is, enriching the usual jealousy and redemption themes with his steely wit and lashings of cake. All together now: "Oh no she!"

Rodrigo Y Gabriela
Guitar masturbation has never been my thing. Obviously there are the greats: Hendricks's Star-Spangled Banner, ACDC's Thunderstruck, a little of Prince's Purple Rain, very little Brian May. But an entire evening of two Mexican ex-metalheads picking and plucking to their heart's content? Sounds like torture. Only the last time I saw this pair, their acoustic, Latin-infused cover of Metallica's Enter the Sandman gave me goose-pimples and had me grinning like a lunatic. Incredible.

7 Fingers: Loft
Cirque de Soleil. Momix. Been there done that. And it seems that even some of the performers have decided it's time to move on. The seven Canadians who constitute the group's titular digits have all worked in these kind of huge, sprawling visual feats. But, after coming together and creating this smaller, tighter collective, the circus that they now produce has been equally stripped down; and through this returned simplification, it has exploded. The central premise holds seven friends as they toy with the everyday items around them - a tablecloth, an apple, a bathtub, knives, dolls - yet the imaginative potential they derive from these humble, domestic beginnings is as refreshing and hypnotic as circus has always meant to be.

Secret Wars
Secret Wars, the fight club of the street art scene, is a 90 minute mano a mano of marker pen conflict. For the last two weeks, the Secret Wars crew, including the likes of Teck 1 and Jimi Crayon, have been cooped in a wee, aptly decorated van, challenging the graphical elite in every major European city for their Don't Sleep tour with Daydream Network. Now back on home territory, expect a wild crowd and some of the UK's freshest artists as tonight sees not only the last semi-final of the championship and the return of the Secret Wars finest, but also the first birthday of the Daydream Network lot.

Festival Remix
There is something distinctly amusing about the illuminatory one-upmanship that's threatening both retinas and electricity rates across the city. Half-arsed Christmas lights have been burning throughout the West End since early November, last week had Canary Wharf come alive with hundreds of glowing eyes, and just this week saw the lighting of the annual 20-footer in Trafalgar Square. Compared to David Batchelor, however, these are all mere appetizers, as from Friday he returns to illuminate the Southbank Centre with his enormous, sprawling, and ever-popular riot of colour, where he is joined this year by Anya Gallaccio's 1000 hand-tinted red and green light bulbs. Even art, it seems, isn't immune to this festive tide.

Enchanted Woodland
If you go down to the woods today you're sure for a big surprise. Though far from a teddy bear's picnic, it's more of a wintry magic sort of affair, as the folks at the 200-acre Syon Park turn their landscape into a living fairy tale. Wrap up warm and bring a friend to cuddle up to for the last weekend of this winter treat.

IThe 27th Great Christmas Pudding Race
Feeling a touch tubby? Or else, overcome by a timely surge of philanthropy? Raising money for the wonderful work done by Cancer Research UK, sign up for the relay sporting event of the year, as teams of six costumed competitors dash through the winding, obstacle laden paths of Covent Garden Market, bearing silver trays of coveted Christmas puddings like the Olympic torch itself.