About this Event
Now in its 27th season of touring nationally, Tomáseen Foley’s A Celtic Christmas recreates the joy and innocence of a night before Christmas in a remote farmhouse in his native parish of Teampall an Ghleanntáin in the west of Ireland – in the 1950s . . . when the neighboring families gather around the fire to grace the wintry night with traditional Irish Christmas carols . . . to raise the rafters with the joy of their music . . . to knock sparks off the flagstone floor with traditional dances - and, of course, stories – they filled the night with the laughter of their stories.
Rekindle the flame in the hearth with stories, music, song and dance from the rich treasury of Ireland’s cultural heritage. Spend an evening with native Irish storyteller Tomáseen Foley and some of the most gifted Celtic musicians, dancers and singers performing anywhere today, both sides of the Atlantic.
“When I was a child, it was around the fireplace of my neighbors’ thatched cottage
that I experienced the last remnants of the old communal way of life. The family
was the center of the community then, and the community was the center of life
itself; the shining axle around which the great wheel of the universe revolved.
Stories, music, song and dance were the spokes of that slowly turning wheel.”
-TOMÁSEEN FOLEY
Storytelling was once the most admired of all the Celtic arts, and A Celtic Christmas is
unique in that it has storytelling at its center. Anchored round that center revolve the
more immediately recognizable traditional Celtic arts of music, song and dance.
Event venue & nearby stays
United Irish Cultural Center, 2700 45th Avenue, San Francisco, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.