There’s a chill in the air. The tourists are packing the streets. And the Christmas decorations are blanketing the stores. It can only mean one thing. The Radio City Christmas Spectacular is once again filling the halls of the venerable theater with throngs of delighted audience members thrilled to be taking part in a tradition that dates back to 1933.

Not that the production is showing its age. The folks at the Madison Square Garden Company, which now owns the Hall, have been aggressive about bringing the show up to date. To that end, they hired Linda Haberman, who conceived, directed and choreographed a new version several years ago. This year’s edition incorporates some of the changes introduced then as well as adding several additional new elements.

But there can perhaps be such a thing as too much tinkering. While the 2007 retooling brought a renewed freshness and vitality to the proceedings--mainly due to a greater concentration on the wonder that is the Rockettes and a healthy dose of up-to-date technology--this 79th edition features some new elements that are more jarring than uplifting.

Chief among them is a running plotline in the second half in which a mother and her young daughter go to see a department store Santa in search of a sold-out toy. Instead, he whisks them off to his workshop at the North Pole, where they find themselves immersed in “Santa’s Video Game,” featuring plenty of fancy 3D visual effects (glasses are inserted into the program). While thankfully, the game doesn’t involve bloodshed and mayhem ala the best-selling Call of Duty series, the sequence, clearly designed to pander to young videogame addicts, doesn’t exactly fit well alongside such classics as “The Nutcracker” and “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers,” let alone “The Living Nativity.”

Fortunately, those classic set pieces are still very much on display, as are such more recent and entertaining segments as “New York at Christmas,” in which the Rockettes take a bus tour of a Manhattan decked out for the holidays; “Santa Flies to New York,” a dizzying 3D animated film which is marred only by its egregious product placements; and “Let Christmas Shine,” for which the dancers are decked out in gorgeous crystal costumes.

And let’s face it--it’s the Rockettes that everyone is there to see. And when that magnificent chorus line kicks up their heels in impossibly precise formation, one gets the feeling, if only briefly, that everything is all right with the world.

Radio City Music Hall, 50th St. and Ave. of the Americas. 866-858-0007. www.radiocitychristmas.com.