Tomáseen Foley's A CELTIC CHRISTMAS Is Coming to Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

Every Christmas for the past twenty-four years, Tomáseen Foley's A Celtic Christmas has crisscrossed the country, bringing to packed venues his authentic remembrance of a way of life that is, alas, no longer with us. A truly family-friendly event, A Celtic Christmas now comes for one night only, on Thursday, December 19, to the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. For tickets ($47-62) or more information, visit https://tickets.mvcpa.com or call (650) 903-6000. Lap passes are available for this performance.

"When I was a child, it was around the fireplaces of my neighbors' thatched cottages that I experienced the last remnants of the old communal way of life," says Tomáseen. "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."

Now in its 24th 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 1050s - 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 their traditional dances. And, of course, there were stories - they filled the night with the laughter of their stories.

The Mail Tribune (Medfod, Oregon) said of this show in 2018, "Rich in the traditions of Western Ireland, the music of A Celtic Christmas alternates between the melancholic and the lively. The two principal dancers, Marcus Donnelly and Alyssa Reichert, stole the show ... the resounding stamp of their hard shoes was a staccato pulse that primed the audience, and when Reichert wore soft soles, on her toes at times, she seemed to float on the musical notes."

Other performers in A Celtic Christmas, all acclaimed artists in their own right, include Brian Bigley (https://www.brianbigleymusic.com/; Uilleann Pipes, Irish flute, Whistles, and Traditional Irish Dance); Eimear Arkins (https://www.eimeararkins.com/; Fiddle) ; Marcus Donnelly (Irish Dance) ; and Alyssa Reichart (Irish Dance)