By Paul Keating

Much of the fascination and fun associated with traditional music and dance is that it can be shared between family, friends and one-time strangers so readily and seemingly at any place or time, but it dovetails with Christmas celebrations especially well.

Its rituals and memories harken back to our childhood as we emphasize the seasonal message of good will towards all. And passing on the customs is not just an aural tradition but an oral one also as vividly presented in two Celtic Christmas productions experienced this past weekend.

On Sunday, I sat enthralled with 1,100 other matinee attendees at the fourth annual “Christmas Celtic Sojourn” at the beautifully restored 103 year old Cutler Majestic Theater in downtown Boston’s theater district. It has grown from a simple one day concert at the Somerville Theater out of the weekly WGBH radio show A Celtic Sojourn hosted by Brian O’Donovan, from Clonakilty, in West Cork.

Now it has become a Boston seasonal classic attended by over 6,000 people in six performances this year, including an extra Monday night showing that will be filmed for a PBS video.

Displaying the same literate presence on stage as on the dial, O’Donovan gave us a blend of Irish life in verse and prose from writers like Patrick Kavanagh and John O’Donohue, along with his own childhood memories. Interwoven was folk music and carols of the highest caliber with his carefully selected cast with whom he chatted and sang with all evening from his comfortable armchair on the stage right corner.

Among the cast of 20 were Waterford’s Karan Casey headlined along with her husband Niall Vallely (on concertina) and Robbie Overson (guitar) giving ample evidence again of why she is one of Ireland’s finest singers. Singing her own composition “This Time Will Pass” so riveted the audience you could hear a pin drop and she later gave her own sophisticated approach to “O Holy Night” that commanded the same attention.

Navan, the a capella Gaelic trio from Madison, Wisconsin again added vocal magic for the seasonal carols, and their grasp of other Celtic language songs. Young 13-year old Aoife O’Donovan distinguished herself again on several songs along with her dad Brian, and mother Lindsay on piano added a familial warmth to the occasion.

O’Donovan’s long-time colleague Robbie O’Connell helped get the audience loosened up with a bit of levity with two comical songs (“Miss Fogarty’s Christmas Cake” and “The Princess and the Frog”) plus the poignant John McCutcheon song “Christmas in the Trenches” about a real WW I experience.

As you would expect there was a formidable array of traditional musicians on stage led by the pride of Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick, the Mulcahy family, led by father Mick and daughters Louise and Michelle, who deservedly won the coveted TG4 young musician of the year award this year.

Their pure drop sound particularly suited the sean nos dancing of Clareman Aidan Vaughan, the Miltown Malbay native who is simply one of the finest natural Clare set dancers I have ever seen. Concertinist Niall Vallely (Armagh) along with accompanist Robbie Overson and Chico Huff backed up Casey and the ensemble for several spirited selections. Boston-based Midwesterners, Shannon Heaton (flute and low whistle) and fiddler George Keith added some American flair along with O’Connell, and Heaton joined with Louise Mulcahy in a lovely flute duet.

Adding a delightful mix of percussive magic was Paddy League, especially when spurring on dancer Kieran Jordan who also served as the show’s choreographer in one number.

In fact, as you might expect now from these stage shows, dancing is an extremely important component, especially for general audiences who might tire of too much traditional Irish music on its own. After all, it is dance music for the most part, and in the mind of an imaginative dancer like Jordan who received a masters in dance at the University of Limerick last year, an opportunity for exploring the old and new.

Inviting her sean nos mentor Aidan Vaughn to perform along with a very promising young college student (UL) from the Washington D.C. area, Nicholas Yenson were wise choices that exhibited different styles.

Yenson started as an Irish step dancer and has done the Riverdance thing, but his Limerick training has clearly expanded his approach to dance in the contemporary world. The hornpipe pas de deux by Jordan and Yenson was playful, flirtatious and exquisitely performed to the music of Heaton, Keith, Vallely and Overson that allowed both dancers to flow effortlessly between modern and traditional steps.

It was another triumphant performance for the still evolving “A Christmas Celtic Sojourn” format that would make for a wonderful PBS show that would allow those outside the Boston area to experience its allure. And producer O’Donovan told me that there are discussions about bringing it to New York’s Town Hall next Christmas.

Over in New Jersey at the Paramus campus of Bergen Community College, Limerick man Tomaseen Foley presented his performing troupe in his “A Celtic Christmas” last Friday evening, and it was another enjoyable performance. Foley, who lives in Oregon, describes himself as one of the last of the generation who experienced “storytelling that was as natural as breathing.”

He is not a professional actor but accidentally fell into the craft of sharing colorful memories of the small rural area where he grew up in West Limerick, or as he calls it Teampall an Ghleanntain. He has captured the charm of the wit and wisdom inherent in a locality where people “lived within the shelter of their neighbors,” relying on them for comfort, support and fellowship in times that were more trying than they are today in Ireland.

Particularly effective was his stringing together stories about parcels from America delivered by Davey the Post (“the original information superhighway” declared by Foley) who especially enjoyed those Christmas time deliveries that yielded a bottle of stout offered by the recipients.

The significance — and necessity — of those parcels from America containing clothes and a white envelope with money were cleverly described in detail. With dramatic impact Foley brought his tales to a fitting close when he linked the fortunes or misfortunes of a neighboring widow woman whose son went off to America, never to be heard from again on the “blackest day of her life.”

Sensing a fatal despair, the neighbors fashioned a letter and parcel from America that brightened an otherwise gloomy Christmas for the lonely woman who found solace in Teampall an Ghleanntain that night.

I overlooked one more Christmas show last week, but fans of Eileen Ivers around the country have been welcoming her seasonal show “An Nollaig — An Irish Christmas” all month.

The program features traditional Irish songs, original tunes and holiday favorites specially arranged by Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul such as “The Holly Tree,” “Don Oiche Ud i mBeithil (One Night in Bethlehem),” “Hark the Herald Angels” and “The Wexford Carol.”

On Thursday, December 21, Eileen and Immigrant Soul will appear at the State Theater in New Brunswick (732-246-7469 or www. statetheatrenj.com) in New Jersey, a venue with wonderful acoustics and surprising intimacy. On the 23rd she is at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk, Virginia (757-892-6366 or www.virginiasymphony.org) with the Virginia Symphony orchestra. On Friday, December 29 she finishes the tour in Massachusetts at the Duxbury Performing Arts Center (781-934-7612 or www.duxbury.k12.ma.us) on Boston’s south shore.