CHRISTOPHER STREET DAY

Christopher Street Day (CSD) is an annual European LGBT celebration held in various cities across Europe. Only Germany and Switzerland use the term CSD, in other countries, the same kind of event is called Gay Pride or Pride Parade. Austria calls their Pride Parade Rainbow Parade. The most prominent CSD events are in Cologne and Berlin, Germany, and Zürich in Switzerland.

The CSD is held in memory of the first big uprising of homosexuals and other minorites against police assaults that took place in New York's Christopher Street in Greenwich Village on June 27, 1969. This so-called Stonewall Riots took place in the bar Stonewall Inn.

New York has celebrated the Christopher Street Liberation Day on the last Saturday of each June since 1970. The first German CSDs took place in Bremen and Berlin in 1979. Other parades before 1979 still had different names. The first documented LGBT parade in Germany was in Münster in April 1972. The frist parade in Switzerland was celebrated on June 24, 1978 in Zürich and was called Christopher-Street-Liberation-Memorial Day.