In December 2025, the youth and community service of Collonges-sous-Salève and the FOL 74 brought together nearly 400 people for their Christmas party. Harry Covert performed a 55-minute family show, three years after a first booking in 2022. The performance ended with the arrival of Father Christmas.
December 2025, the village hall in Collonges-sous-Salève. Families arrive in small groups, coats over their arms, looking for a seat. In front of the stage, the children settle on the floor, in rows that grow tighter and tighter. Behind them the chairs fill up, and the parents end up standing along the walls. Nearly 400 people fit into the hall.
The noise is that of every end-of-year party: names called from one side of the room to the other, neighbours finding each other again, a few children still running between the rows. The lights go down. Harry Covert, magician and mentalist, comes on stage for 55 minutes of family entertainment. At the back of the hall, a father lifts his son so he can see better. In the front rows, hands are already going up before any question has been asked.
The Service Enfance Jeunesse Animation of Collonges-sous-Salève, the town's youth and community service, organises this end-of-year event with the Fédération des Œuvres Laïques de Haute-Savoie. The intention comes down to a few words: bring the families of the town together around a shared moment, before the arrival of Father Christmas.
The size of the audience complicates matters. With nearly 400 people in a village hall, you have to hold the attention of three-year-olds and their grandparents for the best part of an hour, without losing one group or boring the other. Entertainment that is too childish loses the adults. Entertainment that talks too much loses the little ones within ten minutes.
Harry Covert had already performed at this event in 2022. Three years later, the SEJA and the FOL 74 called him back. In a field where organisers often change supplier from one year to the next, that second booking says a good deal about what the first one produced.
For 55 minutes, the show moves at the pace of whatever the room offers up. The children react, make choices, put their hands up. The adults follow, first as spectators of their own children's reactions, then for themselves.
In Collonges-sous-Salève, that sentence describes fairly precisely what happens in the hall. When someone in the audience takes part, everyone else stops watching the stage and watches their face instead. The reaction of a six-year-old becomes the focus of 400 people. And the running order depends on what the audience brings: the same 55 minutes, performed for a different room, would not have produced the same show.
A useful point for organisers: a hypnosis session had been offered to volunteers before the performance, in a separate setting. The family show contained none. It was built on visual, participatory magic, readable by a child and an adult alike.
The performance ended on the moment the children had been waiting for since the start of the afternoon: the arrival of Father Christmas, scheduled for straight afterwards.
A Christmas party brings together children from three to twelve, their parents and sometimes their grandparents. Each of those audiences has its own attention span. A show that aims for the middle loses everyone.
Visual magic is understood without explanation, which settles the question of age. Participation settles the question of length: the room stays in constant contact with the stage, drawn in every few minutes, never left as a passive audience long enough to drift.
At 400 people, the question also becomes technical. Sightlines from the back of the hall, sound, choosing effects that read at twenty metres, managing children sitting on the floor: the size of the audience shapes the construction of the show as much as its age does.
Where it sits in the day matters too. Programmed before Father Christmas, the show fills the wait and turns it into a highlight. For a works council, a town council, an association, a school or a holiday club, it gives the programme a recognisable anchor point, between the welcome and the handing out of presents.
What stays with people after a Christmas party is rarely the detail of the effects. What stays are images: a child standing in front of 400 people, parents filming over the heads in front of them, a whole room laughing at the same moment.
In Collonges-sous-Salève, the performance was shaped by the audience's reactions. The families did not watch a programme they could have seen identically somewhere else: they experienced their own version of the show, with their children in it.
The arrival of Father Christmas then carried that momentum on without a break. The magic did not fill one slot in the programme between two others ,it prepared the moment everyone had been waiting for.
For the SEJA and the FOL 74, this 2025 edition brought together nearly 400 people, three years after a first collaboration.
Collonges-sous-Salève sits at the foot of the Salève, fifteen minutes from Geneva. The French Genevois has a particular kind of demand: border towns such as Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, Archamps, Annemasse and Gaillard, works councils of companies based on the Swiss side, associations organising their Christmas party for French-Swiss families. The show can be performed in French or in English depending on the audience.
Based in Saint-Jorioz, on Lake Annecy, Harry Covert works within a radius of two hundred kilometres. The Annecy basin first, from Annecy to Rumilly, Faverges and Thônes, where town councils, schools and holiday clubs set their end-of-year events as early as the autumn. Then the Arve valley, from La Roche-sur-Foron to Bonneville, Cluses and Sallanches, where the works councils of the precision engineering companies run large Christmas parties. The Chablais completes that area, around Thonon-les-Bains and Évian-les-Bains.
On the Savoie side, Aix-les-Bains, Chambéry and Albertville are all less than an hour away. Higher up, the Tarentaise opens a different kind of demand: in Courchevel, Méribel, Val d'Isère and Tignes, it is the hotels, the residences and the tourist offices that programme during the school holidays, in front of an audience that changes every week and is often international. Chamonix, Megève, La Clusaz, Le Grand-Bornand and Morzine run on the same calendar.
To the west, the area extends to the Pays de Gex and Valserhône, then to Bourg-en-Bresse, Villefranche-sur-Saône, Lyon and Grenoble, where demand comes mainly from the works councils of large groups and from head offices.
On the Swiss side, Geneva, Lausanne, Montreux and the Valais are all within reach in a day. End-of-year events there often bring together a multilingual audience, which means switching from French to English without breaking the rhythm of the show.
Every show is built around the venue, the size of the audience, the ages present, the technical constraints of the hall and where Father Christmas fits into the running order.
Planning a children's Christmas party, an end-of-year event or a family show? Let's talk about your hall, your audience and the running order you have in mind.
In Collonges-sous-Salève, the performance lasted 55 minutes. That length leaves room to build a progression without going beyond the attention span of the youngest children. It is then adjusted according to the average age of the children, the size of the audience, the programme for the day and the time set for Father Christmas.
Yes, provided the staging is adapted to the size of the audience. In Collonges-sous-Salève, nearly 400 people attended. The stage format brings the whole room together around a single moment, with effects chosen to remain readable from the back and participation open to the entire audience.
No. The show performed in Collonges-sous-Salève contained no hypnosis. A separate session had been arranged with volunteers before the performance, outside the programme intended for families. The Christmas show is built on visual magic, audience participation and humour.
Companies, works councils, town councils, local authorities, associations, schools, youth services and holiday clubs. The format also fits the programming of tourist offices, mountain resorts and hotels over the Christmas holidays, and can be adapted to French or English.
Yes. In Collonges-sous-Salève, Father Christmas arrived directly after the performance. That transition is prepared in advance with the organiser: timing, access to the hall, the signal for the end of the show and the role given to Father Christmas in the rest of the party.
In Collonges-sous-Salève, Father Christmas arrived directly after the performance, with no particular staging. At other events, that arrival can be built into the show: Father Christmas appears in front of the audience as a finale, rather than coming through a door. The organiser provides Father Christmas; Harry Covert handles the appearance and allows time to rehearse it with him beforehand.
Harry Covert travels within a radius of around 200 kilometres of Annecy for the Christmas show: Haute-Savoie and Savoie, the Genevois and the Chablais, the Arve valley and the Tarentaise resorts, as well as Lyon, Grenoble, the Ain and French-speaking Switzerland as far as the Valais. Travel, technical requirements and timing are set according to the town, the hall and the expected audience size.
Discover how Harry Covert can transform your events into unforgettable magical experiences.
All my achievements
Transform your events into unforgettable moments with Harry Covert, the dandy-chic magician!
Whether it is for a business meeting, a birthday or a wedding,
Harry will capture your guests with his magical scene performances, close-up, mentalism and hypnosis.
