Normally when we think of Christmas, we think of brightly colored lights draped across houses and tress; shopping in crowded stores as carols play; and getting cozy with family while hunkering down against the cold with warm drinks and warm clothes.

But the Yuletide’s not nearly so gay in Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer,” now being staged by Performance Network Theatre.

On Christmas Eve, in a sloppy house in a Dublin suburb, four men gather to play cards. Sharky, who’s trying to quit drinking, has come to live with his brother, Richard, who lost his sight during a recent, bender-fueled accident; and two heavy-drinking friends — one who keeps company with Sharky’s ex-girlfriend, and another who’s lost his glasses and plants himself in Richard’s home during the holidays — make up the rest of the party.

“It’s a sad little Christmas,” said director Malcolm Tulip.

The kind where you expect to see the scrawny, bare little tree from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on the set. But when a sinister stranger arrives and gets involved in the card game, the stakes rise exponentially, and Sharky finds himself quite literally playing for his soul.

“It’s such a well-developed, character-driven dramatic comedy,” said PNT Artistic Director David Wolber. “That was the initial appeal. It’s just great storytelling, and it really pulled me in. “

Nominated for the 2008 Tony Award for best play, “Seafarer” has been described, by New York Times critic Ben Brantley, as “a thinking person’s alternative to ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ as a flagon of Christmas cheer.”

“One inspiration for the play came from Newgrange, a 5,000-year-old tomb outside of Dublin,” said Tulip. “There’s this long tunnel with hole in the middle, and on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, when the sun rises and shines directly down on it, it lights (the tomb) up. McPherson was really struck by that image.”

Another inspiration came from a myth about a group of Englishmen who gather at a Dublin pub to play cards. They allow a mysterious, menacing stranger to join them, but when one player bends over to pick up a dropped card, he sees the stranger has a cloven hoof for a foot, and then the stranger disappears in a puff of smoke. McPherson wished to take this story further.

But what of the play’s ties to the Anglo-Saxon poem of the same title?

“The central part of it focuses on the life of mariners at sea, and how, when storms come and toss them about, they’re brought face to face with their mortality,” Tulip explained. “In the last third of poem, the focus turns to the idea that it doesn’t matter how many good deeds you’ve done, you’re not guaranteed heaven. … God can cut you down like that. … So ultimately, you’ve got to deal with what you’ve got, because what you’re betting on won’t necessarily be so. There’s always a debt to pay, but how you pay it isn’t certain.”

Despite the spiritual stakes of “Seafarer,” there’s a great deal of comedy, including the depiction of the devilish Mr. Lockhart.

“The common perception of devil is as a malevolent force, but in ‘The Seafarer, … he refers to himself as agent for change,” said Tulip. “Clearly the devil doesn’t have to be the real devil. He can be metaphorical — a means to ask, what does it take to confront your own life? What you think is holding you back in your life?”

As an interesting side note, no female characters appear in “Seafarer.” Indeed, McPherson told the Chicago Tribune, “If a woman walked onto the set of ‘Seafarer,’ the play would be over.”

Why is that? “There’s something about seeing four or five men together,” said Tulip. “You see that men have to be forced to grow up. The play’s also about that, too. About men having to be dragged away from being boys, even when they’re 60 and 70 years old.”

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.