For the Calgary Ukrainian community, the Christmas/New Year Season begins with the Festival of Carols. This year’s Festival took place on the first Sunday of December in the church auditorium of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish. The participation of our sumivtsi in this Festival has become a tradition, with this year being extra special, but let us not get ahead of ourselves and proceed in order of the program.
The concert program began in an unusual way this year. The audience was treated to the sounds of "Dobryy Vechir Tobi" being sung by Korinnya Choir as they entered the auditorium and made their way to the stage.

The program was led by members of our Calgary sumivtsi, Halya Wilson who is also a member of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress executive, as well as Merited Artist of Ukraine, Ihor Bohdan. Podruha Halya did a lovely job of presenting each performing group, while Ihor added to the introductions with beautiful traditional Christmas blessings - vinshuvannya.

The CYM Youth Choir performed the carols "Two Thousand Years Ago" with solos by Victoria and Matvijko, as well as "Joy to all Today" with solos by Danylo, Marko and Danylo. The audience was truly touched by these two carols.

The choirs of "Slava", St. Vladimir's church as well as the vocal group from Assumption Parish "Theotokos" also took part in the Festival.
The CYM family Shysh also took part in the concert. Mykhas’ played a violin duet with his dad, while Andreyka accompanied them on the piano.

The ensemble of older CYM girls, who have performed at various concerts and community events, performed in this Festival as the CYM girls Ensemble "Svitanok".This newly formed ensemble performed "Siyadymo do Stolu" and "Kolyskova" to the guitar talents of Beata Pasieka, their director, and pan Oleksandr Kolesnykov.

To conclude the evening’s program, Ihor Bohdan sang carols from his new repertoire for the project "East and West together".