Halloween is So Gay … Well, Queer … Actually
I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine about Halloween, telling them what I love most about it is how Halloween is inherently Queer. They were caught off guard and offended, responding, “It’s not a queer!” I was like, no, it’s inherently Queer. It’s not officially a queer holiday … Well, in some cities, it may as well be, but, you know. They were really not into hearing me out and walked away.
It’s true, though, there are many parallels between Halloween and queerness. Just as queerness counterbalances normative culture, Halloween represents the relationship between life and death, good and evil, as the veil between the living and dead thins.
Origins of Halloween
Writer and Director of Ancient History Encyclopedia Joshua J. Mark noted in his article History of Halloween, “Halloween traditions in the West date back thousands of years to the festival of Samhain, the Celtic New Year’s festival. The name means ‘summer’s end,’ and the festival marked the close of the harvest season and the coming of winter. Very little is known of the rituals of ancient Samhain because the Church Christianized it—as with many pagan festivals. The Celts believed that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was thinnest at this time, and so the dead could return and walk where they had before.
“The central theme of Samhain was transformation,” which “was often frightening but could also be inspiring.” … “The costumes people wear represent fears and hopes in the same way the people centuries ago wore masks to deter unwelcome spirits and experiences while anticipating joyful reunions with loved ones. Or a night, anyway, is mastered as one becomes that which one would normally dread and, transformed, neutralizes that fear. ” This is where Halloween and queerness lend to each other nicely.
Contemporary Halloween
On Halloween, there are beautiful parallels between how the veil between the living and dead is thin, as is the veil between our conscious selves and our unconscious, and the lines between heteronormativity and queerness blurs. The parts of us that in most of our waking life lie dormant are allowed to be activated and played out. Our inner demons, fears, inferior functions, and humor can be released after being oppressed and repressed outside of the context of Halloween.
Spooky season is when many of our cis-straight peers are “allowed” to wake up queer parts of themselves that are otherwise oppressed through slut shaming, homo-bi-transphobia, or general morality and social judgment. Thinking outside of the murder and zombie costumes (though we love them), consider all the sexy nurses, straight dudes in bad drag, cultural villains, and castaways we will see the straights personifying at parties, in public, and with their families. Day-to-day normative life shames those characteristics away through heteronormative socialization.
Shadow and Persona
In Jungian Depth Psychology, The Shadow comprises the parts of ourselves we keep hidden and repressed from our consciousness due to guilt, shame, and embarrassment. Each of us has a Shadow, but communities and cultures also have a Shadow. The Shadow is the opposite of our conscious persona, the way we wish to think of ourselves and be seen. The thing is, both are of equal value and balance our identities.
Queerness and Shadow
Contemporary American Society is dominated by Christianity, which does not acknowledge a healthy dialogue with its Shadow. Virtuous, saintly, ‘good vibes only’ fixations of American mainstream culture do not allow for the full breadth of human experience. This cuts people off from their authentic, fully conceived experience of life.
For queer cultures, we are skilled in living out aspects of our shame because it is who we are. We have a more in-depth relationship to our sex, sexualization, and gender deconstruction and questioning. In living our authentic lives, we are cultural villains and castaways from mainstream culture, behaviors that would get us killed by Christians during the Salem Witch Trials. What we are shamed for is less about us and more about the culture that shames us. With this built-in ability, we have a leg up compared to our cis-centric and heteronormative peers in letting out cultures’ inner demons, ghosts, and skeletons in our identities.
Luckily for us Queer folks, we are forced into the margins in how heteronormativity projects their shadow material onto us, i.e. calling us groomers, pedophiles, condemning us to hell for sinning. News flash, we are not all Christian, and, queers aren’t doing that harm; the straights are. Yet, holding the projected shadow of Christian Heteronormativity gives us more opportunity to be in relation to our own shadow material.
Halloween and Shadow
Halloween is intrinsically queer because of its position in our culture. On Halloween, mainstream culture allows the Shadow parts of itself to come forward. We embody and present our fears, our opposites, and all the characters and archetypes we repress can be worn as costumes. We externalize aspects of both individual and collective Shadows. Halloween season is a little period each year where our Shadows are being ventilated.
Christmas in October
This necessary Shadow work really gets under the skin of conservative Christians. Just google “Christian Halloween” and scroll through the endless anti-Halloween perspectives. The Christian Post notes, “Setting aside a day to celebrate evil, darkness, witchcraft, fear, death, and the demonic brings disdain to God. Period. A Christian celebrating Halloween would be like a Satan worshiper putting up a nativity scene at Christmas while singing, ‘Happy Birthday, Jesus!’ The two just don’t go together. Jesus has nothing in common with Satan (2 Cor. 6:14), and neither should we.”
What gets under my skin is how, in opposition to Halloween, anti-Halloween Christians are putting up their Christmas decorations. I have a visceral response to seeing this. It is the perfect example of dominant cultural oppression. Like these two-month premature snowmen, Santas and nativity scenes scream, “Whoa whoa whoa, you cannot express anything impure; it makes me comfortable,” like a Karen asking to speak to a manager.
Again, Christianity is the dominant religion in the U.S., yet we are not all Christian. Psychologically speaking, only focusing on the positive is toxic. Shadow work, Halloween, and any ventilation of “evil” are healthy because the release of Shadow takes its power away. This is an essential part of psychological processing on individual, community, and national levels. If we do not regularly assimilate aspects of the Shadow, it continues to be repressed into the unconscious and comes out in harmful ways. Continuing to ignore one’s Shadow is where evil originates.
In their book The Cultural Complex, Thomas Singer and Samuel L. Kimbles suggest, “When the cultural Shadow is recognized as part of oneself, it is also easier to recognize that both sides of a cultural conflict may be threatened, wounded, and suffering … This recognition of cultural shadow could lead to a more comprehensive cultural understanding. A culture which can incorporate and accept shadow aspects of its identity as well as idealized aspects, is more likely to be ‘collectively individuated’ and socially responsible.”
Permission to revel in the Shadows
So, this Halloween, let’s celebrate our queerness as it is mirrored and affirmed by the holiday. Noting Halloween’s queerness allows us to also claim confidence in how queer people and LGBTQ+ communities contribute to the health of the collective psyche of the world. Our resistance to conform to heteronormativity and ability to ventilate the collective Shadow is crucial, even for our conservative Christian counterparts. The Jungians said so.
So, go out there; enjoy life’s tricks and treats; slut it up; embody your fears, and revel in hedonist joy! Happy Halloween!
