It looks like mean old Mr. Potter is winning again, as the Stanford Theatre has announced it won’t have its traditional Christmas Eve screening of “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the third year in a row.

While the 2020 and 2021 screenings were scrapped because of COVID-19, the culprit this year is the classic Palo Alto movie theater’s HVAC system. The theater, which originally opened in 1925 and was restored to great applause in the late 1980s by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, is expected to remain closed until early 2023 while the heating and ventilation system is replaced. (You can check for updates on the theater’s reopening at www.stanfordtheatre.org.)

“It’s a Wonderful Life,” the Frank Capra-directed 1946 holiday classic, had been an annual event at the Stanford Theatre since its reopening in 1989, consistently playing to a sold-out house on Dec. 24. Some fans lamented the news on Facebook, expressing their willingness to bring blankets to the unheated theater rather than miss George Bailey’s struggle with faith for another year, while others said they would just look forward to being back next year.

“I guess we’ll all just have to make our own personal Pottervilles, and seek out bars that serve hard drinks to make men get drunk fast,” longtime movie writer Richard von Busack quipped on Facebook, quoting a line from the movie.

One possibility that may not have been explored yet is holding the screening at the California Theatre in downtown San Jose, which is just as majestic a venue. There is some precedent here, too, as there was a Christmas Eve showing at the California concurrent with the tradtional Stanford showing in 2007. Maybe the nonprofit Stanford Theatre Foundation can warm up to that idea to make everyone’s holidays a little brighter this year.

LIFTING THEIR VOICES: There’s a really special performance this Saturday at Five Wounds Portuguese National Church in San Jose, which is hosting a rare performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” by the nonprofit concert choir I Cantori de Carmel.

Daniel Henriks, the Carmel choir’s music director, was raised in Germany before studying at Julliard and embarking on a career as a baritone in European opera houses and concert halls. As you might expect, hearing performances of Bach’s “Weihnachts-Oratorium,” as it’s known in German, were part of his Christmas tradition growing up.

For the San Jose performance, the soloists will be eight young professional singers and voice students drawn from I Cantori’s new Vocal Arts Academy, an intensive four-day seminar that focuses on Baroque music and Bach’s work. The soloists and concert choir will be accompanied by an orchestra that includes a continuo organ, an oboe d’amore and a Baroque timpani — instruments that would have been used when Bach composed the piece in 1734.

Tickets to the 8 p.m. concert are available at www.icantori.org.

HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS: Santana Row in San Jose again will be the site for a huge Hanukkah celebration on Sunday, the first night of the holiday. The festivities begin at 4 p.m. and include a performance by the West Grand Brass Band, a children’s choir and the lighting of the grand menorah on the stage at Park Valenicia in front of Maggiano’s Little Italy.

Last year, more than 1,500 people attended a gathering on the last night of Hanukkah, which was a collaboration among the seven Chabad centers in Santa Clara County. Get more information on this year’s gathering, as well as other Hanukkah events at www.chanukahsj.com.