Laughing all the way.

Your gay gift list gets longer every holiday season. Friends. Lovers. Ex-lovers. Adopted babies. Everyone who came out to you this year. Everyone you came out to this year. Everyone who came over to your house and watched Ellen De-Generes come out on TV this year.

Where will it end?

It won't, friends, and that's how we wanted it. So enjoy, and let the following selection of big and small remembrances help you keep up with our expanded and improved festivities.

MUSIC

This year kick off the holidays with a Christmas album by dragdom's very own superstar Ru-Paul. With Ho Ho Ho (Rhino), a collection of holiday tunes reimagined the gay way, Ru gives the royal treatment to titles like "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" and "All I Want for Christmas" -- his ode to plastic surgery. Our favorite: "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus."

Tell that special woman in your life she's once, twice, three times a lady -- with three new CDs from the West Coast's most exciting dyke bands: Longstocking's latest, Once Upon a Time Called Now (Chainsaw); the Need's long-awaited self-titled full-length release (Chainsaw); and the Lookers' In Clover (Candyass). And for a holiday gift rich in Hebrew heritage, try Fidl (Traditional Crossroads), by the KIezmatics' lesbian violinist, Alicia Svigals.

This season's operatic offerings should soothe even the most savage opera queen: As a tribute on the 20th anniversary of Maria Callas's death, EMI Classics has remastered and repackaged 20 of Callas's operas. Moreover, La Divina enters the digital age with EMI's CD-ROM, containing the complete 1953 monaural recording of Callas's Tosca at La Scala plus an on-screen libretto, accompanying production photographs, video extracts of Callas's performances, and a discography with audio extracts.

If your beloved is an opera novice, there are a whole bunch of books to get her up to speed. Jack Sacher's Opera: A Listener's Guide (Schirmer, $29.95) uses simple language to explain how opera works and why it matters. Focusing on well-known excerpts from 11 of the world's most popular operas, the book is entertaining enough to appeal to the aficionado as well as the novice. If you don't like your opera nice and easy, you can have it nice and rough, with The Rough Guide to Opera (Penguin, $24.95) by Matthew Boyden. The latest entry in Britain's 15-year-old Rough Guides series is gratifyingly comprehensive, including biographical sketches of nearly 140 composers, act-by-act synopses of hundreds of operas, CD reviews, and a directory of the world's opera houses and festivals. What if your opera buff is a real dummy? Try Bravo! A Guide to Opera for the Perplexed (Plume, $11.95) by Barrymore Laurence Scherer. It explains the bare basics, from the differences between various kinds of voices to why we shout "Bravo! "

BOOKS

A big art book under the tree serves two purposes. It looks substantial on Christmas morning, and if you're sick of him by New Year's, you can whack him with it. For sheer heft, you'll never beat Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective ($75), the official catalog of the Guggenheim Museum's sprawling retrospective on Rauschenberg, from his early "combines" to his recent sculptures and paintings on metal. This year also brings timely recognition for Keith Haring: The artist received a retrospective at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art as well as a big, bold catalog ($75) to match.

If you want to give something totally unforgettable, there's still time to order a faux-classic pet portrait by Los Angeles -- based artist Beau Bradford ([310] 246-0159). For between $1,500 and $10,000, Bradford will immortalize your kitty, monkey, rabbit, or python -- in the Old Master painting of your choice. If you really beg, he'll include you too. Recommended knockoffs: Warhol, van Gogh, and, yes, ladies, Frida Kahlo.

Forget about your pet. If it's you or yours who needs decorative help, look to one of several fetching how-to books here for the holidays. In Our Meals: Making a Home for Family and Friends (Riverhead, $24.95), New York City Ballet stars and longtime pals Heather Watts and Jock Soto share beaucoups recipes and tips for entertaining. Kevyn Aucoin, gay makeup artist to the stars, is Making Faces (Little, Brown, $29.95) -- this time, for you. In this book Aucoin gives the inside story on how to achieve a slew of celestial celebrity looks. Admittedly, glamour is not exactly a stretch for the models he chooses in this large, luscious book. Need convincing? Check out the photos of Lisa Marie and Isabella Rossellini -- as Marilyn Monroe and Barbra Streisand.

If that all sounds too remote for you, New York performance artist Devon Cass brings celebrity home to your living room with Double Take (HarperCollins, $21), a step-by-step guide on how to turn yourself into RuPaul, Cher, Rosie O'Donnell, and other celebs of your choice -- if only for one night. File this title under belated gifts or smuggle it home for yourself; it hits stores right around New Year's.

Of course, true drag deportment merely begins with the face. For a thorough tutorial try Miss Vera's Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls (Doubleday, 14.95) -- a correspondence-course version of Miss Veronica Vera's famed New York workshop (now so lucrative, the profits are being contested in a juicy lawsuit).

We all love to curl up with a good story on long winter nights. Gay and lesbian novels of distinction make great gifts, both for your friends and for the future of gay fiction. (If we don't buy it, they won't print it.) This year's honor roll includes Working Parts (Seal, $12) by Lucy Jane Bledsoe; The Men From the Boys (Dutton, $22.95) by William J. Mann; Apparition Alley (Berkley, $21.95) by Katherine V. Forrest; A/K/A (St. Martin's, $23.95) by Ruthann Robson; Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Queer Motherhood (Firebrand, $22.95) by Cherrie Moraga; and The Mammoth Book of Gay Short Stories (Carroll & Graf, $10.95), edited by Peter Burton.

This year you can honor gay history by giving titles old and new. You can introduce someone younger to Loving Someone Gay III: 20th Anniversary Edition (Celestial Arts, $12.95) by Don Clark -- one of the first books ever to explain us to that pesky other 90% of the populace. Our history marches on via fiction too: This year Patricia Nell Warren releases Billy's Boy (Wildcat, $24.95), the conclusion to the trilogy of gay novels that began with 1975's classic The Front Runner And with his third novel, Hostage (Delacorte, $21.95), R.D. Zimmerman is poised to become the first gay mystery writer in recent memory to find lasting crossover success.

Finally, what would gay history be without trash? For sheer enjoyment stuff your honey's stocking with Valley of the Dolls (Grove, $12), rereleased after 15 years out of print.

As gay best-seller lists confirm, we love to laugh at ourselves, and the holidays bring several new humor books to tickle our gay extended family. Openly Bob (Rob Weisbach, $23) by comedian and writer Bob Smith, will make laugh, as will The Five Lesbian Brothers' Guide to Life (Fireside, $10). For Hanukkah gifts try The Kings of Kings and I: The Greatest Story Ever Kvetched (HarperSanFrancisco, $20) by Jaffe Cohen. And if all else fails, grab this guaranteed blast for all: Book (Rob Weisbach, $22) by the famously gay-friendly Whoopi Goldberg.

AUDIO BOOKS

Want a gift so tasteful, it speaks for itself? Then snap up Random House's impeccably packaged unabridged recording of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil ($39.95) by John Berendt. Or you can give good entertainment coupled with community spirit with Tom Spanbauer's The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon ($59.95), from Seattle's Hall Closet et Books, a gay-owned audio company dedicated to bringing genuine gay stuff to genuine gay folks. Check Hall Closet's catalog for more gay titles, including The Normal Heart ($25), The Gifts of the Body ($19.95), and Claire of the moon ($16.95).

If you're feeling more inclusive, you can give your hetero gal pals hints on how to get a date for the holidays with Sex Tips for Straight Women From a Gay Man (Harper Audio, $12). And just for fun, go Naked (Time Warner, $17), with humorist David Sedaris (and his sister, Amy Sedaris) reading from his best-selling collection of humor stories.

VIDEOS

This holiday season offers what may be the best assortment ever of gussied-up films starring your favorite divas. With Columbia-TriStar's new Barbra Streisand Collection, you can float from Funny Girl to Funny Lady in one long high C. And your diva-viewing pleasure is just beginning: Warner Bros. Classics is coming out with a 25th-anniversary rerelease of Bob Fosse's mordant masterpiece Cabaret.

Face it, though -- the queen of the crop is Elizabeth Taylor. In MGM's fab new Elizabeth Taylor package, you can revel in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Taylor faces off with wildly hunky Paul Newman; Father of the Bride, in which she dons at least 50 yards of wedding dress; and, most gloriously, Butterfield 8, in which lady of the night Liz grinds her stiletto heel into Laurence Harvey's shoe. Buy the collection if only to practice this move.

Aside from Hollywood camp, videos are a great way to share gay and lesbian films with friends and lovers -- plus, you can shop by mail. Gay-oriented distributor Wolfe Video offers Everything Relative, writer-director Sharon Pollack's self-described lesbian Big Chill, about a group of women whose reunion is fun of dyke drama. For guy-type action, Water Bearer Films has Douglas Langway's Raising Heroes, a tale of gays, guns, and one cute baby.