Christopher Street Day

Christopher Street Day (CSD) is an annual European LGBT celebration and demonstration held in various cities across Europe for the rights of LGBT people, and against discrimination and exclusion. It is Germany's and Switzerland's counterpart to Gay Pride or Pride Parades. Austria calls their Pride Parade Rainbow Parade. The most prominent CSD events are Berlin Pride, CSD Hamburg and CSD Cologne, Germany; and Zürich in Switzerland.

The CSD is held in memory of the Stonewall Riots, the first big uprising of LGBT people against police assaults that took place at the Stonewall Inn, a bar on Manhattan, New York City's Christopher Street in the district of Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969.

On June 28, 1970 the Christopher Street Liberation Day in New York and the Christopher Street West Association in Los Angeles marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the first Gay Pride Parades in United States history. To accommodate the interests of the many different groups participating, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee named the days leading up to the march Gay Pride Week.

Both New York City and Los Angeles have since continued to remember and celebrate the Christopher Street Liberation Day/Christopher Street West on the last Saturday of each June. It has become an international tradition to hold a demonstration for the rights of LGBT people in the summer. The first German Christopher Street Day took place in Berlin in 1979; other parades before then had different names. The first documented LGBT parade in Germany was in Münster on 29 April 1972. The first parade in Switzerland was celebrated on June 24, 1978 in Zürich and was called "Christopher Street Liberation Memorial Day."

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