In addition to “A Christmas Celtic Sojourn,” holiday-related happenings in the area include a performance by “The Celtic Kates” – Kate Chadbourne, Katie Mahoney, Katie O’Neill and Cait Sargent Lubelczyk – on December 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hibernian Cultural Centre in Worcester. This will be the debut for this quartet, all with local ties and diverse backgrounds, and an affinity for Celtic music.

Chadbourne is a musician, poet, storyteller and part-time college professor whose background is in Irish language singing; Mahoney is an accomplished jazz singer; and both O’Neill and Sargent Lubelczyk learned to sing in the musical theater environment. The concert will feature holiday-related and other music – traditional, folk, and contemporary – from Ireland, Scotland and North America. Local musicians Liz Alexander, George Arata, Greg Bacon, Maarten Goji Tom Lubelczyk, Myra MacLeod and Eli Matteo.
For ticket information and other details, see https://www.facebook.com/events/413870565476266, or call 508-344-4932.
The annual Gaelic Roots Christmas Concert at Boston College will take place on December 8, with guitar/bouzouki-and-flute duo Matt and Shannon Heaton as well as fiddler Hanneke Cassel and guitarist-vocalist Keith Murphy. The four, mainstays of the Boston/New England music scene, will play traditional and original music of the season. The concert, which is free, begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Cadigan Alumni Center on BC’s Brighton Campus. See www.bc.edu/gaelicroots for more information.
Club Passim will host a winter solstice/Christmas show by harpist-vocalist Áine Minogue on December 23 at 7:30 p.m. Minogue’s music expresses the poetry, mythology and rituals associated with Irish tradition and culture; her CD/DVD releases include “To Warm the Winter’s Night” and “Winter: A Meditation.” For ticket reservations and other details, see passim.org.
The Burren Pub in Somerville holds its unfailingly entertaining New Year’s Eve Party, with Galway fiddler Helena Delaney and an impressive coterie of traditional musicians holding an Irish session in the pub’s front room.
Not strictly holiday-related but no less festive events at the Burren this month include a December 12 show with two bands in the Celtic rock vein: The Narrowbacks from New York City and Boston’s own Gobshites. The Narrowbacks describe their sound thus: “ If Joe Strummer, Shane MacGowan and Bruce Springsteen survived a drinking session through the five boroughs, the hangover would be called The Narrowbacks.” The Gobshites pride themselves for not only turning traditional Irish standards into hard rock rave-ups, but by putting an Irish slant on punk-rock classics. The concert starts at 7 p.m.
Tickets may be all but gone by the time you read this, but the Burren’s Backroom Series will present an all-too-rare pairing of widely acclaimed singer Karan Casey with one of Ireland’s most celebrated bands of the past decade or so, Lunasa, with shows at 7:30 and 9 p.m.
Go to burren.com for details on all these events.
–SEAN SMITH