Halloween in Georgetown
The most popular place to be in Washington on Halloween night (October 31) is Georgetown. M Street and Wisconsin Avenue are thronged with revelers who walk up and down the streets showing off their costumes and posing for photos. The whole place is a huge, rowdy outdoor party, and the sidewalks become extremely crowded at times. This is one of the most exciting nights of the year in Washington.
A bee and a ladybug
Silver Spring Zombie Walk
A zombie is a dead person who has somehow returned to life as a walking corpse. It is popular in horror movies and is a character often seen at Halloween. In downtown Silver Spring, each year on a Saturday night before Halloween, hundreds of zombies gather for the city’s annual Zombie Walk. They wear tattered clothes and are covered with blood. They stumble up Georgia Avenue, groaning and moaning, with frequent calls for “brains.” Their destination is the AFI Silver Theatre where they gather again to watch a zombie movie.
A corpse looks out from a body bag.
Simchat Torah
The Torah, the first five books of the Bible from Genesis to Deuteronomy, is central to Jewish life. It is divided into weekly portions and read throughout the year. Simchat Torah (Hebrew for “Rejoicing the Torah”), a holiday which falls between late September and late October, is a celebration of the end of the yearly cycle of Torah reading and the start of a new cycle. There is much rejoicing at the Simchat Torah evening service when Torah scrolls are removed from the Ark and carried around the synagogue in a joyful procession called hakafah, which is accompanied by much singing and dancing. Then the last part of Deuteronomy is finished, the first part of Genesis is begun, and a new cycle of Torah reading starts until next year’s Simchat Torah. The following is a Simchat Torah celebration at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
Downtown Sukkot
Sukkot, or Festival of Booths, is a seven-day Jewish festival which takes place between late September and late October, just a few days after Yom Kippur. While Yom Kippur is one of the most solemn holidays of the Jewish year, Sukkot is one of the most joyful. The festival commemorates the forty years that Jews spent wandering in the Sinai desert during which they built temporary huts (sukkot) to live in. To celebrate Sukkot, Jews are instructed to build temporary outdoor dwellings at their homes or synagogues, and meals are eaten in them. Each year during Sukkot, Ohev Sholom, The National Synagogue constructs a sukkah in one of the public squares in downtown Washington and serves free lunches in it.
2-by-4 beams for the sukkah are unloaded from a truck parked by the busy K Street, NW, at Franklin Square.
Army Ten-Miler
Road races in Washington come in pairs, one in the spring and one in the fall. There are National Marathon in March and Marine Corps Marathon in October, D.C. Triathlon in June and Nation’s Triathlon in September, Cherry Blossom Ten-Miler in April and Army Ten-Miler in October. The Army Ten-Miler is organized by the U.S. Army’s Military District of Washington and is held each year on a Sunday morning in October. It is the largest ten-mile road race in America, with 30,000 runners, both military and civilian, participating each year. The race starts and finishes at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the runners run pass many of D.C.’s landmarks, including Lincoln Memorial, Kennedy Center, Washington Monument, Smithsonian Castle, and the U.S. Capitol.
Robert Emmet Commemoration
Robert Emmet was an Irish patriot who was hanged by the British on September 20, 1803 after a failed rebellion. Each year on a Sunday near September 20, a group of Irish Americans gather at the Robert Emmet statue in Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. to pay tribute to him. His famous “Speech from the Dock” is read aloud, and poems and music are offered.
Letelier-Moffitt Memorial Ceremony
Orlando Letelier was once Chile’s ambassador to the United States and a vocal critic of the military dictatorship in Chile. On the morning of September 21, 1976, he was driving by Sheridan Circle in Washington’s Embassy Row when a bomb attached to his car exploded, killing himself and his American colleague, Ronni Moffitt. Chilean agents of the Pinochet regime were later convicted for this crime, the most notorious political assassination in Washington before September 11, 2001. Every year on the Sunday closest to September 21, a memorial ceremony is held at Sheridan Circle and is attended by family members, friends, former colleagues and the Chilean ambassador. Poems are read aloud, music is played, and short speeches are given. As the program concludes, people walk across the street and lay flowers at a small memorial to Letelier and Moffitt at the site of their murder.
Fashions Night Out in Georgetown
Fashion’s Night Out is an international fashion and shopping event which takes place on a Friday night in September, at the start of New York Fashion Week. On this night, thousands of stores in many cities around the world stay open late and offer discounts and special in-store programs from fashion shows to designer talks to cocktail parties. In Washington’s Georgetown, dozens of stores, restaurants and salons on Wisconsin Avenue and M Street host a variety of fashion events and shopping promotions.
Piccolo Piggies, a children’s clothing store at 1533 Wisconsin Avenue, has live models inside its storefront windows. The store also offers a 25 percent discount from 6 to 9 pm. It is a rainy night, and the umbrellas are out.
Janmastami Festival at Hare Krishna Temple
Janmastami, the birthday of Krishna, Hinduism’s central deity, falls in the Gregorian calendar between mid-August and mid-September. This is one of the biggest holidays in India and the biggest annual celebration in many of the Hare Krishna temples around the world. Each year, the Hare Krishna Temple in Potomac, Maryland hosts an evening festival which is attended by thousands of devotees and visitors. Inside the temple are chantings and deity bathing ceremonies, and outside are dance and drama performances, a free vegetarian feast, activities for children, and stalls selling books, gifts, and food. At midnight, the time of Krishna’s birth, an arati (lamp) ceremony is held in a darkened temple.
Marine Barracks Evening Parade
Every Friday evening in the summer, the Marine Barracks Washington presents an evening parade that attracts hundreds of spectators to the historic barracks on Capitol Hill. The one-hour-and-fifteen-minute program starts at 8:45 pm and features “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, “The Commandant’s Own” The United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, the Marine Corps Color Guard, the Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon, and Ceremonial Marchers.
A Marine directs traffic at 8th and I Street, SE for the hundreds of spectators attending the Evening Parade.