Since the 1840s, some people have complained about the commercialization of Christmas. Others have embraced it. “Yuletide Factory,” a circus show at the New Victory Theater, splits the difference, locating its cheer inside a sweatshop churning out seasonal doodads. Nothing says Christmas like a repetitive stress injury?

Cirque Mechanics, a troupe with a giddy steampunk aesthetic, has produced five previous shows at the New Victory. This wordless entertainment is an adaptation, not especially inspired, of its first, “Birdhouse Factory (2008).” The holiday version, conceived by the Cirque Mechanics creative director, Chris Lashua, stages its circus acts on and around the factory floor — and the ceiling and occasionally a back wall. While the performers are all indisputably on the nice list, there’s a certain lack of spirit to the show, Christmas or otherwise. The mood fluctuates between ho ho ho and ho hum.

In the first act, the workers arrive at a Depression Era plant. They’re an exuberant bunch, especially Chase Culp’s shambling clown. But their somber boss (Steven Ragatz, also a writer and a co-director) quashes any holiday revelry. (This is the 1930s, which means that human resources departments that can address religious discrimination haven’t been invented yet.) Still, the employees sneak in a rope act (Jeremy Cifonie and Erika Radcliffe) and a contortionist routine (Mariama Kouyate). And the boss might not be such a killjoy after all. In a sweet sequence — and the rare circus act that kids absolutely should try at home — he juggles several balls and then his own hat, briefcase and cane. Alas, juggling skills don’t guarantee solvency and the factory goes under, which allows for an intermission.

Still, this is a circus, so bankruptcy doesn’t last long. In the second act the clown has bailed out the factory (too flexible to fail?) and the unusually nimble workers can now celebrate without fear of management reprisal. Some of the subsequent routines too closely echo the ones in the first act, though there is a delightful German wheel number (Cifione again), the only sequence that meaningfully exploits the eclectic machinery that Cirque Mechanics is known for.

Apparently it’s hard to be the boss. There are a couple of entr’actes in which the clown, teased by his former supervisor, inclines toward the Grinchy. If this sophisticated critique of the corrupting power of capitalism goes over the heads of some of the New Victory’s littler attendees, they may yet intuit that seizing the means of production is even better with a few back handsprings.

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