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Halloween is nigh upon us! If you are in the United States (*raises hand*), this season inevitably brings the specter of too many pumpkin-flavored consumer products, overpriced bags of candy at grocery stores and of course – the costumed holiday itself at the end of every October. Halloween, at least in the American tradition, represents an amalgamation of numerous cultural and religious influences over the last two millennia (perhaps even longer). One of its more recent iterations is also among its least familiar: Queer Christmas!
Halloween has long been a beloved holiday in the queer community such that it has attained the moniker of our very own “Christmas” for its LGBTQIA+ observers. But how long has the queer community looked to Halloween for festive inspiration, and what does “Queer Christmas” mean for that same community today?
Samhain and Shattered Boundaries
The story of Halloween as a queer holiday arguably begins thousands of years ago with the holiday’s origins in ancient Europe. But throughout the reformations of Halloween, the holiday has been crafted with a unique space for “others” in Western sociocultural contexts: individuals who are unusual, non-conforming or otherwise failed to fit in with prescribed societal structures, religious views and/or gender politics.
To understand why, a quick review of Halloween’s historical development is in order. Halloween likely originated among the ancient Celtic peoples who celebrated “Samhain” as a harvest festival on November 1st. Samhain had robust supernatural connections, with celebrants reportedly donning costumes to protect themselves from spirits freely wandering the earth, and religious connotations in the Druid priests’ preparations for vast symbolic bonfires.[1]
The Celtic Samhain represented the breakdown of temporal boundaries
The season was a vital acknowledgment of the blessings of the summer harvest, and the hopes for another fruitful year ahead. Likewise, “[f]or the Celts this time of year held great symbolic significance, and it was said that many Mythic kings and heroes died on Samhain.”[2] Historians believe that Samhain represented the loosening of boundaries, and breaking down of binaries, between the temporal and the ephemeral, the earthly and the spiritual. Consequently, “the liminality handed down through the generations from the Celts…is still present and giving a certain amount of expectation and freedom to the festivities of Halloween.”[3]
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that “freedom” and the wider sense of fluidity associated with Samhain represented a threat to the emerging medieval political hegemon that was the Catholic Church. Of course, no one – not even a medieval pope! – wanted to be held responsible for canceling a party. Adopting the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mantra, Pope Gregory IV formally moved the Catholic holiday of “All Saints Day” from its original 7th century May slot to November 1st of the liturgical calendar.[4] In England, All Saints Day was more widely known as “All Hallows Day”. Consequently, the day prior, October 31st, became known as “All Hallows Eve”.
Despite the efforts of the Catholic Church, the roots of Halloween never disappeared
For the next thousand years, religious, pagan and secular traditions around the autumn holidays became increasingly meshed to the point of near inseparability. However, the pre-Christian roots (and values) of the earlier pagan traditions never fully disappeared (however much the Roman Church attempted to tidy it up for propriety’s sake).
Halloween and “Others”
By the Victorian era, Halloween had become a preeminent celebration in its own right and a night for raucous activity from youths and those on society’s fringes. Irish and Scottish immigrants to the US, for example, brought “Mischief Night” to the American celebration of Halloween.[5] Mischief Night had clear sticking power in a rapidly changing, urbanizing America. One source notes that, as a result of the import, “Halloween in early 19th-century America was a night for pranks, tricks, illusions, and anarchy.”[6]
The American Halloween was defined by tricks, not treats, in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Examples of mischief abounded throughout the US around the holiday: Lesley Bannatyne cites several, including chapel seats coated with molasses in 1887, pipe bomb explosions in 1888, houses vandalized with black paint in 1891, and hundreds of young boys somehow coordinating to attack well-to-do travelers on Washington streetcars in 1884.[7] A feature of these pranks, and wider vandalism, were demands for sweets and treats – perhaps the most immediate precursor to the sugar-coated traditions of the modern Halloween. Regardless, the pranks and trickery sometimes verged on the cruel and potentially violent, leading to a wider societal movement to quell the most dangerous excesses of the holiday in the early 20th century.
Admittedly, throwing your neighbor’s carriage on their farmhouse roof is impressive
By the time that American candy companies began to fully take advantage of Halloween’s commercial potential post-World War II, the basic parameters of the holiday were set: a celebration centered on pre-Christian traditions with layers of Catholic religiosity on top, surrounded by the supernatural and mysterious, and then celebrated with orchestrated social upheaval and defiance of polite norms expected on every other day of the year. Is it any wonder, then, that Halloween was soon definitively “queered?”
Queer Harlem, Queer Halloween?
The range of cultural influences which morphed Halloween into “Queer Christmas” may also have included the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and the “Great Migration” of the Black community out of the Jim Crow-era South.[8]
The early 20th century was a particularly tense and dangerous period for many forms of queer expression in the US, particularly expression of gender identity. At that time, so-called “Masquerade Laws” had been formalized throughout the US and were increasingly leveraged against gender non-conforming persons, nonbinary and transgender people. In 1913, a transgender man in New York City was sentenced to a three-year imprisonment on the basis of such discriminatory laws; the magistrate trying the case argued that only a “twisted moral viewpoint” could account for such cross-dressing.[9] The notorious “three article laws” originate from this period, implying that individual could not wear more than three items of clothing belonging to the “opposite” gender. These regulations have an unclear legal history, but may have been used colloquially as a “rule of thumb” by police or an easy reference within the queer community for members to warn and defend each other.[10] Arrests and jailings of queer Americans led the LGBTQIA+ community to deeper solidarity and organized self-protection.
The so-called “Masquerade” and “Three Article” Laws were leveraged against drag and queer expression in the early 20th century
For queer Black Americans, the threat of arrest and violence was heightened by the intensely racist legal and social structures of the early 20th century evident throughout the country. It is perhaps in the Black queer community that some Halloween traditions and queer expression first became intertwined in the Harlem Renaissance. Historians have argued that “Black queer artists and intellectuals were among the most influential contributors to this cultural movement.”[11] This was the era of Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Jimmie Daniels and Gladys Bentley among many, many other Black queer artistic lights of the age.
Black queer culture in the 1920s was often centered in New York’s fabulous nightclubs, where famous drag queens and kings could perform with a degree of freedom available in few other venues. One source notes that:
“The new sounds of jazz and blues pulsing through Harlem drove an exuberant, anything-goes nightlife. Black and white, queer and straight alike shook off the dour restrictions of Prohibition at legendary music-and-dance spots like the Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club, and in Harlem’s hundreds of speakeasies…[t]hat freedom of self-expression extended, in varying degrees, to gender and sexual identity.”[12]
Extravagant costuming and daring fashion were at the core of this scene, particularly where they allowed for the defiance of gender binaries and gender nonconformity. The Harlem Renaissance was thus a definitive period for drag (and, by extension, queer) history. Queer Black Americans elevated the drag art form at a time when public queer expression was sharply curtailed outside these welcoming venues.
Artist and drag King Gladys Bentley was among the queer icons of the Harlem Renaissance (Credit: Michael Ochs, Archives Getty Images)
The Harlem Renaissance coincides with the decades when the modern notion of Halloween, in the form of parties and costumes for young and old alike, was emerging out of the more raucous celebrations of the 19th century. Its queer vibrance, and the extensive cultural impact of its drag balls, may have influenced the wider trend of a costume-driven holiday as a safe space (or perhaps safe night?) for queer people of all racial backgrounds. Just as the speakeasies created space for queer expression on nights throughout the year, Halloween increasingly allowed for similar modes of expression brought out into the wider mainstream every October 31st. For queer Americans, Halloween was quickly becoming the single night when they could “get away” with being themselves.
For queer Americans in the early 20th century, Halloween became a night when they could safely “be themselves” in public
From “Bitches” to “Gay” Christmas?
The queer connection to Halloween became much more explicit in the post-World War II period with the rise of “Bitches Christmas” in Philadelphia. It is from this informal “holiday” that “Gay Christmas” and today “Queer Christmas” most directly descend.
Marc Stein, a historian at San Francisco State University, has elucidated the 1950s and 60s era of “Bitches Christmas” on Halloween in his book City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves. Drag performances were a central aspect of this Halloween tradition as performers would lead parades of queer Philadelphians throughout the city’s gay-friendly establishments.[13] Eventually, “bitches Christmas” was updated to “gay Christmas” which eventually became a common parlance to describe queer Halloween activities throughout the county.
Similar developments were also happening in San Francisco – itself a rapidly growing center of activism for the American queer community during the 1940s and 50s. In 1946, the first of what would become the “Castro Halloween Parties” kicked off in Eureka Valley.[14] The event founder, Ernie DeBaca, was considered a friend of the growing local queer community and welcomed queer contestants to his costume party in the 1960s and 70s.[15] Like Philadelphia, Halloween in San Francisco proved to be a ripe opportunity for the queer community to come out – quite literally – in epic fashion within the context of the mainstream holiday.
Today, drag balls, parades and other queer-centric celebrations are common at Halloween
After the Stonewall Riots in 1969, the queer community writ large became a much more visible, active force in American culture – but Halloween remained a beloved holiday for all members of the growing community. Queer Halloween parties had evolved into mainstream street parties by 1980, with hundreds of thousands of participants in major metropolitan areas.[16]
Today, many of these events have evolved or been formalized into regular, public programs celebrating both the queer community and the Halloween season all at once. Even a brief web search turns up hundreds of LGBT+ themed Halloween events all over the country, some of which are now decades old annual affairs. In many cases, descriptions and nomenclature now include “queer” and/or various acronyms for the community rather than “gay” to promote inclusivity of all members of the community (hi, fellow a-specs!) at these “hallowed” gatherings, although drag remains deeply important to many of these celebrations.
Go Forth and Party!
Given the vastly complex and nuanced history of Halloween, it is unlikely that this seminal holiday has finished evolving; what seems certain is that Halloween is going nowhere, and that the queer community will remain among its strongest devotees. At its core, Halloween elevates the unique, the unusual, and the unencumbered. Halloween obliterates hard borders and encourages self-exploration beyond the prescriptions and demands of our otherwise mundane lives. This vision of Halloween is arguably queer in of itself, regardless of how the queer community has subsequently latched onto the holiday as a particular forum for self-actualization. Fundamentally, Halloween as “Queer Christmas” has one driving mandate: be yourself – on Halloween, and every day of the year.
[1] Heather Thomas, “The Origins of Halloween Traditions,” Library of Congress, October 26, 2021, https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2021/10/the-origins-of-halloween-traditions/.
[2] Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World, “Origins in Samhain,” Brown University, accessed October 9, 2023, https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/13things/7448.html.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia, “All Saints’ Day,” Encyclopedia Britannica, September 7, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/All-Saints-Day.
[5] Thomas, ibid.
[6] Lesley Bannatyne, “When Halloween Was All Tricks and No Treats,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 27, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-halloween-was-all-tricks-no-treats-180966996/.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Brandon Bent, “How the LGBT Community Transformed Halloween,” American Institute of Bisexuality, October 27, 2022, https://bi.org/en/articles/how-the-lgbt-community-transformed-halloween.
[9] Hugh Ryan, “How Dressing in Drag Was Labeled a Crime in the 20th Century,” June 25, 2019, History.com, https://www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-lgbtq-drag-three-article-rule.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Steven W. Lewis, “The Harlem Renaissance in Black Queer History,” National Museum of African American History and Culture, May 28, 2022, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/harlem-renaissance-black-queer-history.
[12] Iván Román, “6 Key Figures of the Harlem Renaissance’s Queer Scene,” History.com, updated June 16, 2023, https://www.history.com/news/harlem-renaissance-figures-gay-lesbian.
[13] Matt Lavietes, “Why Halloween is ‘gay Christmas’ to many LGBTQ Americans,” NBC News, October 28, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-life-and-style/halloween-gay-christmas-many-lgbtq-americans-rcna4027.
[14] Icarus, “Halloween jumps to the Castro,” SF Gay History, October 28, 2014, https://www.sfgayhistory.com/2014/10/28/halloween-jumps-to-the-castro/.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Bent, ibid.