'Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men's Dress in the Twentieth Century (Dress, Body, Culture)

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After controversy over the sanitized carol swirled in the media and on the internet, Hallmark amended its response: “We never intend to offend or make political statements with our products and in hindsight, we realize we shouldn't have changed the lyrics on the ornament. Beginning with a look at the subcultural world of gay men in the early part of the 20th century, this work analyzes the trends in dress adopted by gay men as well as the challenge gay style has made to mainstream men's fashion. gay’ still means happy -- joyful -- I refuse to let the word [be] hijacked by the same-sex relationship community,” one Facebook commenter wrote on the company’s wall Thursday. Surely if the company had created the phrase from scratch rather than by bowdlerizing a traditional song, the grammatical purists would have rushed in to object to this use of fun as an adjective. The melody of "Deck the Hall" is taken from "Nos Galan" ("New Year's Eve"), a traditional Welsh New Year's Eve carol published in 1794, although it is much older.

But apparently it’s more acceptable today to refer explicitly to drunkenness in a carol often sung by children than it is to risk implying homosexuality. Do you take control of your class like an experienced educator or do you, in an attempt to curb the outbursts, change the lyrics of a 150 year old song and replace the word "gay" with "bright"? Hallmark’s action also suggests that gay has become so associated with homosexuality that it can no longer retain its earlier sense of ‘bright or festive.Beginning with a look at the subcultural world of gay men in the early part of the 20th century, this work analyzes the trends in dress adopted by gay men as well as the challenge gay style has made to mainstream men s fashion. Nineteenth-century children might snicker thinking gay referred to libertines or prostitutes, but they were still allowed to sing about “gay apparel. Shaun Cole is Course Leader for MA History and Culture of Fashion and MA Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. The tune is that of an old Welsh air, first found in a musical manuscript by Welsh harpist John Parry dating back to the 1700s.

However, it is easy to forget that, with few exceptions, gay men earlier in the century took great pains to conceal their sexual identity. Most gay men resorted to a number of subtle dress codes to identify themselves to other gay men -- from Oscar Wildes famous green carnation, which was still being worn in the 1930s, through to suede shoes. Particularly in Western cultures, people view holiday season as a time to be jolly (which means fun or cheerful) as you can see from the lyrics of the carol. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising.The greetings and gift giant apologized Thursday for one of its intended-to-be-jolly creations: An ornament shaped like an ugly Christmas sweater, adorned with the words, “Don we now our FUN apparel. If you’d like to file an allegation of infringement, you’ll need to follow the process described in our Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. One of Hallmark’s new Keepsake tree ornaments for 2013, the Holiday Sweater, revises a line from the well-known carol, “Deck the Halls.