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By Jesse Monteagudo
Photos: West Holly Halloweenies
While both Lesbian and Gay History Month and Coming Out Day are of recent origin, this month's most popular queer holiday predates recorded history and captures the essence of gayness to a much greater degree than the activist holidays. Just open the pages of any gay paper during the first weeks of November and you will see what our community was doing on October 31st. In the words of the lesbian poet and scholar Judy Grahn, Halloween is "the great gay holiday". For thousands of years, many of our ancestors observed October 31 and made it holy. In the Christian calendar, it is All Hallow's Eve, a holy or hallowed evening that leads directly to All Saints' Day (Nov. 1) and then to All Souls' Day or Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead; Nov. 2). Like other "Christian" holidays, Halloween replaced an older, "pagan" festival, in this case the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced "Sah-wan"). The Celts in turn inherited Samhain from the "Fairy People" who, according to anthropologist Margaret Murray, lived in Northern Europe before the Celtic invasion. The Fairies' small size and dark complexion made them appear supernatural to the Celts and inspired tales of faeries and leprechauns that the Irish, the ethnic and spiritual descendants of the Celts, are famous for.
As Grahn noted in Another Mother Tongue, her cultural history of gay and lesbian peoples, Halloween is a especially appropriate holiday for queers, both as spiritual descendants of the Fairy People and as traditional intermediaries between the mortal and spirit worlds. In a sense, the gay Halloween is but a continuation in modern guise, of our peoples' ancient roles as priests, witches, shamans and berdaches. As Grahn put it: "[W]ho could better imitate spirits than the gay people whose traditional priestly role required just such intercourse with the spirit world ... The qualities of impersonation and the dangerous business of crossing over from one world to another help explain why Halloween is the most significant gay holiday. Elaborate drag balls often accompanied by costume parades and attendance by stars and political figures, large parties, processions, limousines, and mass public turnouts in gay ghetto areas on Halloween mark it as the Night of Nights for the gay community." Grahn is not the first one to notice the link between Halloween and drag. Like Purim, Mardi Gras and Wigstock, Halloween is a holiday for cross-dressers of all persuasions. Here again we are the heirs to a great tradition, for in many societies cross-dressers and androgynous people served their communities as contacts with the spirit world. Grahn, Arthur Evans (Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture) and Randy Conner (Blossom of Bone) agree that cross-dressers played a spiritual role among many "primitive" peoples who valued female courage and strength as well as male beauty and gentleness. This is true of the "Fairy People", who first observed "Halloween", and of the Celts, who kept the Fairies' tradition alive and who gave us such memorable gay icons as the heroic Boudicca and the beautiful naked warriors epitomized in The Dying Gaul.
Cross-dressing or drag is as much a part of Halloween as the
jack-o-lanterns that were once used to scare away spirits and which are still
part of our Halloween celebrations. Even cities that passed laws against
cross-dressing would waive them on October 31st, allowing massive "drag
balls" that lasted till dawn.
In his history of gay San Francisco, historian Ron Williams wrote about that city's Halloween celebrations, which were "usually televised on the local news and all the straight people would go to Polk Street to watch all the gay costumes and drag queens." More recently, after San Francisco's gay center moved from Polk Street to Castro Street, "Muscle-sissies" held parties in which "very buffed muscle guys in drag" got together "to have fun and show the world their feminine side." Like the gay boy who puts on his mother's dress, or the young dyke who decks out in her butchest attire, they are only following a millennia-old tradition. When the Christian Church conquered Europe during the Middle Ages, it tried to suppress all remnants of the Old Faiths, killing many of their followers in the process. However, as with the Christmas tree and the May Pole, many Halloween customs were assimilated as Christian rituals. In America, Halloween is mainly a children's holiday, a time when children either go out "trick or treating" or, because of the rising crime rate, attend private costume parties. Meanwhile, the "pagan" feast of Halloween/Samhain continues to be observed, as a largely underground holiday, by the dykes and faggots and queers of all stripes who continue the old traditions and who manage to survive in spite of every attempt to destroy us. Halloween's appeal to the GLBT communities goes beyond its historical or spiritual connotations. I believe that it has much to do with our role as outsiders in society; our love for the unusual and the fantastic; our ability to find humor in the absurdities and misfortunes of life; our fascination with festive costumes and the world of make-believe; and our special capacity to have fun. While others treat Halloween as just a children's holiday, lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people observe and cherish it as a day in which we can do away with dull, ordinary, dumb reality and be our exotic, erotic selves. From the inter-racial drag balls of the 1890's -- the first "gay decade" -- to today's Fantasy Fests, Halloween remains our special day. As for me, I loved Halloween as a gay boy and continue to love it as a gay man. To me, Halloween is a time to be myself, to let loose, to wear an outrageous costume (or nothing at all), to stay out late, to get drunk (but not drive drunk), and to forget about all my problems. Whatever you do on this very gay day, be careful, play safe, and enjoy yourself. After a few thousand years, we should be able to do it right. |
October is a major month in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
calendar. It is Lesbian and Gay History Month, one devoted to dis-covering
and celebrating the GLBT past. On October 11, we observe "Coming Out Day", a
day in which we "take the next step" in our ongoing, coming-out process. 
© 1997-2000 BEI