GO BUY SOME CHEER AND SUPPORT A QUEER!

Buy a wreath @ the SASG Holiday Sale

I have a confession: Every December, I buy the biggest fresh pine wreath I can afford, and I try to keep it alive until February or March. It’s a fire hazard, I KNOW, but I’m telling you, nothing smells better than a dying pine bough! I swear by the SASG Charity Sale in Capitol Hill. “We do it so we can give something back to the community,” a long-time volunteer coordinator named “Sarge” tells me, “100% of every sale goes to SASG.” Seattle Area Support Group is a non-profit that focuses on programs supporting the LGBTQ community, and their holiday sale is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. Go buy some cheer and support a queer! KELLY O

FROM BADASS TO DIVA IN THE SPAN OF THREE-AND-A-HALF MINUTES

ZELLi @ the Crocodile

Upstart rapper ZELLi’s new single “Get Down” plays around in roughly the same sandbox as Azealia Banks’s breakout hit “212,” an attention-deficit tune that finds her going from braggadocio-spitting badass to dance-hall diva in the span of three-and-a-half short minutes. Whether she opts to follow that bottom-heavy banger path or the mid-’90s pop-rap route laid out on debut Poetry Tape remains to be seen. That’s the thing about seeing young rappers in their embryonic stage: Repurposed funk samples can take up residence next to cocaine-cutting synth lines, love jams can rub up against songs called “You a Gangsta Right?” Someday she’ll probably pick a lane and stick to it; until then, the world’s hers. KYLE FLECK

LAUGHS, STAGE MAGIC, AND WELL-TRAINED DOGS AND CHILDREN

A Christmas Story @ the 5th Avenue

Brandon Ivie directs, and all the principal performers are fantastic, including Jessica Skerritt as the mom, Dane Stokinger as the dad, and Mark Jeffrey James Weber as the kid who just wants a BB gun for Christmas. I don't even like dogs and children, but the dogs and children in this show are insanely well trained and actually funny. I hate to say it, but A Christmas Story has more laughs than Homo for the Holidays (sorry, it's true!) and more stage magic than Mary Poppins (which is based on my favorite movie of all time). If you have family in town and you're not sure what to do with them, you're welcome. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

A LOOK AT PEOPLE FROM UNEXPECTED ANGLES

Back to Front: Malick Sidibe, J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere @ M.I.A. Gallery

Sidibe (1936-) and Ojeikere (1930-2014) are West African black-and-white photographers, hailing from Mali and Nigeria, respectively. Sidibe is an established, beloved master; Ojeikere is finding worldwide audiences since his images of sculptural African hair were a hit at 2013's Venice Biennale. M.I.A. Gallery director Mariane Ibrahim-Lenhardt presents a thoughtful consideration of one of Sidibe’s favorite themes: looking at people from unexpected angles, with a special focus on women’s strong backs. A Sidibe show is a reason to come out in itself, but Ojeikere also has been shown very little on the West Coast, and possibly not at all in Seattle. JEN GRAVES

A FRESH LOOK AT THE FRYE'S COLLECTION

#SocialMedium: @ Frye

The Frye #crowdsourced the curation of their 232 Founding Collection paintings via social media, tabulating all the likes, comments, shares, reblogs, retweets, and all other units of e-pproval until a verdict was reached. These are the favorites. Robin Held, Scott Lawrimore, and Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker (the director who also curates) have transformed the Frye from oil-painting cemetery to contemporary art center in one short decade. Their stardom is of the generous variety: They've remade the Frye by commissioning new works, exhibitions, and publications by living, often local, artists, bringing much-needed air and light into the museum (and tackling that riddle attributed, maybe apocryphally, to Gertrude Stein, that a museum can be either a museum or modern, never both). But this people's museum, with its "citizen curators," is a curatorial strategy, however well-disguised as a curatorial abdication. JEN GRAVES