Halloween has allowed the queer community and their straight allies a space to be as colorful and loud as they like. For one day a year people can explore and express themselves without the fear of social repercussions. With generations of revelers celebrating Halloween as a chance to explore their gender and sexuality, and with crossdressing built in as a central part of the celebration, it’s really no wonder the queer community has dubbed Halloween as Gay Christmas.
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During the 1980’s it was reported that some 30,000 people poured into San Francisco’s Castro district to celebrate Halloween. The emergence of gay neighborhoods met the soaring popularity of crossdressing and by the 1960’s Halloween masquerade balls were born. Meanwhile the popularity of cabaret allowed this type of gender-bending expression to expand beyond the holiday. Through the 1920’s and 30’s crossdressing continued to be a central part of LGBT culture during Halloween. Within two years, crossdressing on Halloween had become so popular that the Pittsburg police stopped arresting people for it. On Halloween 1912 men and women in Pittsburg were actually arrested for crossdressing and in the same city a local paper reported bands of girls dressing as tomboys. People were big into crossdressing and Halloween was the number one day to get in drag and strut your stuff. These traditions then made there way to the Americas where they blended again with indigenous cultures, adopting games like trick-or-treat and dressing in costume.įast forward to the early 1900’s and the tradition of dressing in costume on Halloween had become a socially-accepted means for people to protest social norms if only for one night. The Hallow Eve holiday comprised of scary story telling and games such as trick or treat. The pervasive influence of Catholicism allowed the holiday to spread widely. And then Decades later under catholic rule Samhain became All Saints Day. Samhain became Hallow Eve once the Romans conquered the Celtics. Even at this early date queer folx were representing and took places of prominence on Samhain as shamans, priests, and healers.
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The tradition started as a time to celebrate the end of summer and the coming of the darkness. The first instances of Halloween came from the Celtic holiday of Samhain some 2000 years ago. That’s right kids, buckle up because we’re talking the Babadook. And learn all about our new gay Halloween icon: the Babadook. But how exactly did Halloween come to be such a massive holiday among the queer community? Follow along as we detail the wild ride that saw Halloween transform from a Celtic tradition into the month-long celebration it currently is. So much so that many a queer has called the holiday Gay Christmas, placing it in opposition to actual Christmas, a time when many folx in the queer community feel especially alone among unsupportive families and outdated traditions. For a long time Halloween has been a big deal in gay culture.