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Halloween is 'gay Christmas' for many in the LGBTQ community. This year, it has been canceled.
Social Issues
Halloween is ‘gay Christmas’ for many in the LGBTQ community. This year, it has been canceled.
By Samantha Schmidt
October 15
This was going to be the year that Halloween fell on a Saturday. ... For the weeks leading up to it, Chanel Devereaux, a drag queen and longtime host at Nellie’s Sports Bar in Washington, would have lined up performances across town. She would have sewn more than a dozen extravagant costumes for other drag queens and painted scores of friends’ faces for the long-running High Heel Race on 17th Street in Dupont Circle and the Miss Adams Morgan Pageant. The month of October alone would have brought in about a quarter of Devereaux’s annual income.
“Halloween is what I affectionately call the High Holy Days of drag,” Devereaux said. ... But almost all of those plans have been called off because of the coronavirus pandemic. Devereaux had already lost more than 90 percent of her annual income, ever since the District halted live performances in restaurants and clubs. Now, the most important time of the year for drag performers is effectively canceled. ... “I’m pretty much assuming that Halloween is just a no-go this year,” she said.
The pandemic is putting a damper on a holiday known for trick-or-treating children and festivities for adults. There is no haunted house this year at the Field of Screams in Rockville, although it has opened its haunted trails with distancing restrictions. Night of the Living Zoo is off. The annual ’80s Halloween dance party at the Black Cat will be virtual. And for many in the LGBTQ community, the pandemic means missing out on their most beloved holiday, a celebration that for generations offered a chance to dress however they please and to be whomever they want.
It’s a season that reminds Devereaux, a transgender woman, of some of the happiest moments of her childhood. Growing up in a poor family on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, her mother couldn’t afford to buy her a Halloween costume. So for six years in a row, Devereaux wore what her mother had at home — a witch costume. And she loved it.
{snip}
Samantha Schmidt
Samantha Schmidt is a reporter covering gender and family issues. Follow https://twitter.com/schmidtsam7
Halloween is ‘gay Christmas’ for many in the LGBTQ community. This year, it has been canceled.
By Samantha Schmidt
October 15
This was going to be the year that Halloween fell on a Saturday. ... For the weeks leading up to it, Chanel Devereaux, a drag queen and longtime host at Nellie’s Sports Bar in Washington, would have lined up performances across town. She would have sewn more than a dozen extravagant costumes for other drag queens and painted scores of friends’ faces for the long-running High Heel Race on 17th Street in Dupont Circle and the Miss Adams Morgan Pageant. The month of October alone would have brought in about a quarter of Devereaux’s annual income.
“Halloween is what I affectionately call the High Holy Days of drag,” Devereaux said. ... But almost all of those plans have been called off because of the coronavirus pandemic. Devereaux had already lost more than 90 percent of her annual income, ever since the District halted live performances in restaurants and clubs. Now, the most important time of the year for drag performers is effectively canceled. ... “I’m pretty much assuming that Halloween is just a no-go this year,” she said.
The pandemic is putting a damper on a holiday known for trick-or-treating children and festivities for adults. There is no haunted house this year at the Field of Screams in Rockville, although it has opened its haunted trails with distancing restrictions. Night of the Living Zoo is off. The annual ’80s Halloween dance party at the Black Cat will be virtual. And for many in the LGBTQ community, the pandemic means missing out on their most beloved holiday, a celebration that for generations offered a chance to dress however they please and to be whomever they want.
It’s a season that reminds Devereaux, a transgender woman, of some of the happiest moments of her childhood. Growing up in a poor family on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, her mother couldn’t afford to buy her a Halloween costume. So for six years in a row, Devereaux wore what her mother had at home — a witch costume. And she loved it.
{snip}
Samantha Schmidt
Samantha Schmidt is a reporter covering gender and family issues. Follow https://twitter.com/schmidtsam7
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