Gay Christmas: How Halloween Became a Queer Holiday

If you were to ask people what their favorite holiday is, most will answer Christmas. Halloween is a close second in the general public, but the favorite holiday of a particular group of people. If you’re familiar with the term Gay Christmas, you probably know that it refers to Halloween. That’s because this holiday is a big hit with the LGBTQ+ community, and has been so for decades.

The notion that Halloween became a queer holiday in the past decade or two is wrong. In fact, its roots to the queer community are almost a century old. Read on to learn more about the holiday’s queer past and why it’s so adored in the queer community.

Why Do We Love the Holidays So Much?

Everyone loves both Christmas and Halloween. It’s a time to unwind and have some fun with family and friends. We rarely have the chance to unwind and relax in our busy schedules. The holidays are the perfect time for peace of mind and overindulging in hobbies. 

Casino sites, for example, know this pretty well, pushing out numerous Christmas and Halloween-themed promos to keep players engaged. The bonuses offered for players are usually more than enough to get you playing the games you love during Halloween. You also get developers pushing out Hallows Eve games more frequently this time of the year, simply because we have more time on our hands for gaming hobbies during the holidays.

And, while some people would rather stay home and spin Halloween-themed slots, others would rather socialize and go out on masked parties. The LGBTQ+ community is most interested in the latter, as it finds refuge and comfort in the crossdressing nature of Hallows Eve.

How Halloween Turned a Queer Holiday

Halloween’s connection to the queer community runs deeper than you might think. It’s been so for over a century. Despite many linking it to the more aggressive LGBTQ+ agenda in the past decade, its links to this community runs much deeper. Its roots can be traced back to the early 1990s in the city of Pittsburgh.

At that time, there was a notice of an issue with queer people expressing themselves on Halloween. This was noted in an article published in the Pittsburgh Press on November 1, 1907, right after Halloween. It talked more about women in the city cross-dressing as men for Halloween. This was illegal at the time, yet there was no basis to arrest any of these women.

Many transgender individuals crossdressing on Halloween were simply labelled cross-dressers. And the queer community didn’t mind. Halloween was a safe time for queer people to display their true selves without disturbing the hornet’s nest. At the time, the word queer was used in a derogatory way toward LGBTQ+ people. It was associated with odds and not normal, and was adopted within the LGBTQ+ community around 1914.

In the mid-1990s, Halloween continue being regarded as a queer holiday. It was associated with deviant ideas, and the queer community and culture fit right in with it. By the 1960s, there were laws prohibiting crossdressing in many states and regions across the USA. It took over two decades until some states began to loosen these laws, allowing marginalized groups to safely express themselves in public.

The Prevalence of Carnivalesque Holidays

Historians believe that the prevalence of carnivalesque Halloween parties in the 1960s and later contribute to the decriminalization of crossdressing. Hallows Eve is a time when the social order is disrupted, allowing queer people to express themselves without them being considered a threat to the social order.

It’s a time which celebrates alternative forms of expression and the reversal of social roles and hierarchies. It’s easy to see how it resonates well with any marginalized group. Halloween provided the perfect opportunity for queer people to take a different role in society, one that’s celebrated instead of punished. Bit by bit, Halloween took a cult status among members of the LGBTQ+ community, which lasts to this day.

The Origins of the Phrase Gay Christmas

The origins of the Gay Christmas phrase goes back to the mid-XX century. Per historian Marc Stein from the San Francisco State University, it’s a continuation of the phrase Bitches Christmas. This term referred to a costumed party that originated in Philadelphia in the 1950s or 1960s. Queer parties were held in the city back then, following drag performers jumping from one gay bar to another.

It was a sort of an unofficial Halloween parade for the campy holiday. There wasn’t one, but two Bitches Christmas events in Philadelphia – one in white part and another in the black part of the city. There was social and cultural segregation in Philadelphia at that time, which goes on in some forms even today. Many black performers reportedly felt cautious or anxious about participating in the gay nightlife in white neighborhoods, so they stuck to the black parts of the city back then.

Once the notorious parties became well known to the public, they were shut down by police commissioner Frank Rizzo at the end of the 1960s. He did this in response to complaints about rowdiness from the queer crowds. In the beginning, these parties were mostly underground, with only a small number of people knowing about them. As they grew and became public, they created the perfect condition for such a repression.

While Bitches Christmas didn’t last long, queer Halloween parties began picking up pace in major cities across the USA in the following decades. The New York Greenwich Village Halloween parade started in 1973, while Los Angeles’ own West Hollywood Halloween parade kicked off 5 years later.

Fast forward a few decades, and we live in a time where the LGBTQ+ community is still facing repression in many parts of the world. Granted, it’s in a much better position than before, but there are still laws and regulations required to give these people the attention they deserve. At least they can still dress up for Gay Christmas without being slandered by other groups.