From October 31st to November 2nd, many traditions are celebrated to scare even the most hard-hearted!

The Comité Tricolore offers you a way to fend off the evil spirits by having fun with many cheerful events.

La Maison Française’s joyful activities

La Maison Française of the French Embassy is a place of exchange and repository for French culture in the United States.

Take a look at the incredible variety of activities you can enjoy over the next two weeks, and enjoy the fun:

MOVIE - CONCERT - A new musical proposal of Buster Keaton’s masterpiece!
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
From 7:30pm to 9:00pm

The OZMA quartet ensemble follows the burlesque hero in this emotional and insane journey using a new, mischievous, and surprising soundtrack. It offers a hilarious and original re-reading of the film, and presents it in a whole new light.

Click here to register for Buster Keaton’s “Three Ages”*

CONCERT - OZMA Jazz Quintet
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
From 7:30pm to 8:30pm

Since 2002,OZMA’s jazz has taken us on journeys across continents but also musical styles, borrowing largely from rock grammars, traditional music and electronic landscapes.

Composed by Stéphane Scharlé,OZMA’s latest album HYPERLAPSE is a bewitching and jubilant road book dedicated to ten cities crossed by the band during an incredible world tour in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Click here to register.

CONFERENCE - The role of France in the American War of Independence

Thursday, October 27, 2022
From 1:30pm to 4:30pm

Dr. Iris de Rode’s book "François-Jean de Chastellux" is an intellectual biography of the soldier-philosopher François-Jean de Chastellux (1734-1788) who, although little known today, played a crucial role at the crossroads of cultural, military, social and Atlantic history.

Guests will have the opportunity to meet with the American Friends of Lafayette, the Lafayette Trail and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association as doors open at 1:30 for coffee.

Click here to register.

FILM SCREENING - "I lost my body"

Thursday, October 27, 2022
From 7:00pm to 9:00pm

This film is part of the FSF - Fantastic Science Fiction at La Maison Française.

Based on Guillaume Laurant’s novel Happy Hand, I Lost My Body is the first animated film to win the Nespresso Grand Prize awarded by the jury of the International Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival.

Following the screening there will be a behind-the-scenes presentation by the film’s editor, Benjamin Massoubre.

EXHIBIT & FILM SCREENING - Monte-Carlo Legends

Tuesday, November 1, 2022
From 7:30am to 9:30am

A tribute to the enduring appeal of Monaco’s best-known district, Monte-Carlo and its legendary Grand Prix.
This special screening is the story of a bluff!

"Monaco Grand Prix, The Legend" is a film by Yann-Antony Noghès and produced by Alexandre Rougier.

Click here to register.

CONCERT - Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel

Wednesday, November 2, 2022
From 7:30pm to 9:30pm

Villa Albertine, in partnership with the German Embassy, is delighted to present a concert of the Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel at La Maison Française.

Together, they create connections, tell untold stories and take audiences on journeys to the heart of chamber music. A recent world premiere of Paul Arma’s Sonata for Violin and Piano at the Konzerthaus Berlin was hailed as the “sensation of the evening” by Deutschlandfunk

Click here to register.

La Maison Française invites you to join a charity event to launch a Give for Hope™ campaign to raise funds for Dreams for Danny, a surgical evaluation travel scholarship program that provides up to $1,000 in travel costs for families who seek a surgical evaluation at a level 4 facility more than fifty miles from their home.

CHARITY EVENT - Brain Recovery project

Friday, October 28, 2022
From 5:30pm to 8:00pm

Meet other families with fun and games for the kids including a costume contest, characters, face painting, and balloon animals.

Click here to register

Next Solidarity Dinner at Rosemary Bristro Cafe

November 7, 2022 18:30

Building on a French-based cuisine, Rosemary is a multicultural restaurant representative of the dynamism and fluidity of D.C. Please join us for a cozy, enriching dining experience.

Check here to see the exciting menu proposed by chef-owner Frederic Darricarrère for our Comité Tricolore Dinner and register.

Rosemary Bistro cafe appeared in the Washington Post best restaurants DC in April 2022 :
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/04/25/best-restaurants-dc-april-2022/

The price of the ticket includes the price of the meal which goes entirely to the restaurant plus a tax-deductible donation to the CT which goes entirely to one of our beneficiaries.
30 tickets are available at the price of $ 91 per person, which consists of $ 66 for your meal (tax and tip included, drinks excluded) and $25 as a donation to the Comité Tricolore. The donation is tax deductible.

If you are coming with friends, please let us know so that we can seat you together at the same table. We regroup guests at tables of 6 or 8 unless you wish a separate table.

Other Halloween Traditions
from Samhain to Samain

We have found many sites that describe other Halloween traditions from around the world. All of them are celebrated with food, drinks and spooky ghosts!

The underlying belief is that there is a connection between our world and the world of spirits.

In Ireland: Samhain

It is generally considered that Halloween originated from Ireland’s Samhain harvest which is celebrated by baking Barmbrack, a fruit cake with a hidden coin inside the cake that presages a great future for the one who finds it.

In England, where King James I publicly condemned Catholicism as a superstition, Halloween was in a way replaced by Guy Fawkes Day on November 5. On that day in 1605, Guy Fawkes and a group of radical English Catholics tried unsuccessfully to assassinate the King by blowing up Parliament. Fawkes’ execution is commemorated by lighting bonfires and fireworks.

In Spain: Samain

In Galicia, people celebrate Halloween with the ancient Celtic tradition of Samaín, the ’noites dos Calacús’ (nights of the pumpkins) from October 31 to November 1, when the gates of the otherworld open and spirits come and visit this world. They eat pork and drink ’queimada’ out of a pumpkin. It is prepared with orujo (a kind of grappa), granulated sugar, lemon peel, and coffee beans that are burned on a fireproof clay pot to ward off evil spirits.

Les expressions françaises!

’Avoir la Chair de Poule’ (goosebumps): The term was first used in medicine in the 17th century according to Expressio.fr.

It is a reflex mechanism which causes the horripilatory muscles to erect so hair stands up as a reaction to emotions and cold. It is quite useful at the end of October when the weather gets brisk and Halloween gets under way!

Interestly enough, having fewer geese in Europe than in the U.S. they compare it to a more lowly fowl and only have the chair de poule!

Check our website to get to know each of our member organizations. You might be interested in joining them either to support them or to take full advantage of their great cultural programs.
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